Rogiér Power

With Kumasi we would like to introduce you to cocoa juice, a brand new product that will not only amaze your taste buds but will fight food waste and poverty in the cocoa sector as well. The first time you taste Kumasi you may think "Hmm, strangely fruity!'' Naturally, we associate cocoa with a fine, chocolaty taste, but there is way more to cocoa than just that. That's why we were surprised that this delicious juice normally goes to waste. During the harvest of the cocoa beans this delicious juice flows into the earth, just like that. And that's a waste. Both for the farmers as for us, cocoa lovers. 100% Natural, 0% Waste If you want to make chocolate, it's just the beans that you're after. But for Kumasi, we are mainly interested in a residual product, the fruit pulp. In our cocoa juice we found a 100% natural solution, made from the fruit surrounding the cocoa beans. In this way, we prevent the waste of an exclusive and delicious product, and are able to offer farmers in Ghana an extra source of income (up to 30% increase). Next to that, our product will be 100% Ghanaian, as we are producing our cocoa juice from bean to bottle in the Kumasi region (Ghana). Strangely Fruity Extracting juice from the pulp of the cocoa fruit sounds like a cool idea, but is it also tasty? For a documentary for Nestlé, Lars Gierveld traveled to Ghana to learn more about the cocoa supply chain, and during this quest he was offered some juice for the first time. He was overwhelmed by the fruity taste of the juice: "The taste is something that you have never experienced before! Because our association with cacao is so strongly linked to chocolate, our brain expects a chocolate taste". But that's not what it tastes like at all! Cocoa is a fruit, and therefore the pulp has a fruity, sweet and invigorating flavor (think apple-lychee!).