A Shared Love of Chocolate: How Taste Artisan Chocolate started

Taste Artisan Chocolate was started by a group of friends who love chocolate and had a dream of creating a chocolate company to highlight flavors in each variety of cacao bean.

Nestled in the shadows of Mount Timpanogos in Downtown Provo, Utah, Taste Artisan Chocolate is currently owned by the Coleman family. What started as a fascination and connoisseurship of artisan chocolate grew into a passion to be involved in the chocolate creation and flavor development process. The Taste team had never dabbled in the culinary sphere prior to opening their own chocolate company, but all it took was some tenacious self-teaching and a drive to create flavorful, ethical and sustainable chocolate that helped kick-start this local family business to success.

Morgan and Char Coleman are both Utah natives and habitual entrepreneurs. Morgan, an artist, met Char on a blind date while she was getting her MBA, and they’ve been busy ever since. They started learning more about the world of artisan chocolate about six years ago, and with their love of food and travel, the Colemans realized that chocolate was where they wanted to be. After assembling a team of chocolate lovers and world travelers, and with minimal experience in the business of chocolate, coupled with no prior experience in making chocolate, the team embarked on a serious adventure.

Morgan is the head chocolate maker but has a small team of creative locals assisting him in the day-to-day manufacturing. Morgan is self-taught, grew up in a travel- and food-centric family, and has a knack for figuring out machinery of all kinds. Spending months prototyping chocolate and exploring what’s possible, the Taste team loves examining the range of possible flavors of bean origins. 

What originally started as a dream for the Colemans has become a reality, and they love to share their experiences. In addition to manufacturing chocolate, the Colemans also run a small artisan chocolate and dessert shop where they feature the chocolate of many top manufacturers as well as other fine foods from around the world. Just as in fine art, they believe that chocolate is subjective and that there is a perfect bar for a variety of tastes.

Taste Artisan Chocolate doesn’t want every bar of chocolate that it makes to taste the same. Even if the team had worked with a bean in the past, each time they receive beans from a new harvest, they start over from scratch because as growing conditions change from year to year, so can the flavor profiles for those beans. What Taste Artisan Chocolate loves is the variety of flavors that come through in the chocolate when processed well. The true genetic flavors of each bean are what you experience when you enjoy Taste Artisan Chocolate.

The factory utilizes traditional chocolate-making methods and modern technologies that showcase the extraordinary flavor range of the world's best cacao. When you enjoy Taste Artisan Chocolate, the hope is that you experience chocolate in a way that you never have before.