About Us

About Us.

Hi!  We are Josh Chocolates and we make bean-to-bar chocolate confections in Northern New Jersey.  We believe in sourcing ethically farmed cocoa beans, roasting them in-house and serving freshly made chocolate at a price that is fair to our customers and our farmers.  In fact, our beans are sourced from an award-winning farm in Ecuador that is held accountable for its labor and agricultural practices by the Rainforest Alliance™.  We take pride in creating our chocolate bars with unique inclusions and our hand painted bonbons with small batch ganache and caramels.  Josh started this business because he was tired of craft chocolate being labeled as a luxury item, and he wanted to serve the community a chocolate that is approachable to the working class.  As a new business, we are focused on being as sustainable as possible, while serving the highest level and most ethical chocolate to our customers in nearby retail locations and online.  Josh would like to personally invite you to contact him to talk about our products and processes and to help with your purchase.

Hello, I am Josh and I am a Chocolate Maker and Chocolatier.  What’s the difference?  A Chocolate Maker makes chocolate from the cocoa bean to the bar, a Chocolatier uses the bar to make chocolate confections such as our chocolate bars and our hand-painted bonbons.  I do both.  As a chef, I have worked in some of New York City’s best restaurants, including Loring Place, Union Square Hospitality Group, and the James Beard House.  I am an International Culinary Center culinary program distinguished graduate.  From the Institute of Culinary Education, I am a Professional Pastry graduate as well as the recipient of the Leadership Award from the Culinary Management course.  Additionally, I am a 19-year military Veteran with multiple combat deployments and have been recognized with the Bronze Star and Meritorious Service Medals.  I have always been a hard worker and I strongly believe in doing the right thing, even if it’s the hard thing.

Along with making chocolate, you can find me raising my family of boys, Liam, Ledger, Jackson and Oliver, and training for triathlons.  Who needs sleep anyway!?

About our beans.

We source our beans from Hacienda San Jose, an award-winning cacao plantation in Ecuador, known for its very clean and high-quality cacao.  This fourth generation farming family focuses on unique techniques of planting, harvesting and drying cacao beans, which keeps beans clean and pesticide free.  The result is a cacao bean with an exquisite aroma and distinguished nutty flavor with a lighter colored shell, due to the care of avoiding dirt and contaminants during the harvest and fermentation processes. 

Hacienda San Jose is UTZ and Rainforest Alliance certified.