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In 2016, a quest for adventure and freedom began. The founder of Heart's Love Cacao, Dylan Everett, or "Malakai," left behind his carpentry job and his home state of Colorado to set out on a journey across the world.
His first destination was the forests of Guatemala. There he encountered the Theobromine Cacao tree, which soon became a source of deep healing and passion for him. Naturally, he has always had a soft spot for chocolate. With the last 8 years of working with the medicine of the Theobroma tree, it quickly became a part of his life's mission to share more love with the world through the magic of Cacao and to give back to the local farmers who make chocolate possible.
Heart's Love Cacao was officially launched in 2022 thanks to some amazing humans. Our love story continues in Bethel, Maine. A lovely mountain town in a state of expansive forests, deep winters, and plenty of chocolate lovers, the natural place for our love story to continue.
Malakai spent many years living intermittently on the amazing Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. After discovering the exceptional quality of cacao in the area, he began visiting local cacao farmers and cooperatives. Following his first visit to "Finca Nueva Amanacer," a women's cacao cooperative, he envisioned a way to give back and share the love he had found with Cacao. During a six-month quarantine at the lake due to COVID, he was offered a place to root down in the state of Maine, his ancestral land. He waited out the pandemic while connecting with family and experimenting with cacao. Since he landed in the Northeast it has been a journey of finding joy with the tranquility, quality of life, and purity of the western Maine mountains. A traveler to his bones, he visits remote areas of the world, always searching for the purest of ingredients to add to his chocolate that come straight from the source.
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