Learn
Our Story
Father quits successful law practice, falls in love with making chocolate from scratch, and dumps his life savings into one of the first craft chocolate companies in the US.
How it started
Shawn Eden spent twenty years as a trial lawyer before walking away from the practice to build a chocolate factory in a building on East Commercial Street that had been empty for a decade. He learned to roast on a repurposed coffee drum, cracked beans with a hair dryer and a shop vac, and gave away the first two years of production to anyone who would taste it and tell him the truth.
Daughter joins the company
Lawren Eden thought her father might have lost his mind, and worked alongside him part-time while attending university anyway. She now leads our marketing and our work with women cocoa farmers, and founded the Empowered Girls and Enlightened Boys Clubs that run in our partner communities in Tanzania.
Bean to bar and so much more
Father travels to remote regions of Ecuador, the Amazon, Tanzania and the Philippines to source exotic cocoa beans directly from smallholder farmers and share profits with them. Daughter joins, and focuses specifically on empowering women cocoa farmers and the girls in their communities. Fifty-five origin trips later, we still negotiate every price in person.
Made by hand in Southwest Missouri
The chocolate, made by hand in small batches at a micro-factory in Southwest Missouri, gets some recognition, wins some awards and lands on the shelves of shops and specialty groceries around the country. Father and daughter write a book together about Father's story and the mission of their company.
Social responsibility isn't a buzzword
As business owners, our greatest opportunity and challenge has been weaving social responsibility into everything we do. Eden Chocolate was born committed to fairness, sustainability, minimal environmental impact and community enhancement. Those commitments will be in place as long as the company is. We are dedicated not just to making the best quality chocolate you can buy, but to making it in such a way that the more you learn about it, the better you feel about it. - Shawn Eden, Founder & CEO, and Lawren Eden, CMO