Caroline Houghton, founder of Carobeans, has worked with chocolate in pastry for nearly 20 years. Her journey began at age 18, after developing a nut allergy and realizing she could no longer safely enjoy most sweets due to cross-contamination risks. Determined not to give up dessert, she began making her own confections from scratch. Over time, her passion grew beyond pastry into a search for chocolate that was not only ethically sourced but also truly delicious. When she couldn’t find it, she decided to make it herself.

In 2022, Caroline transformed Carobeans from a hobby pastry business into a full-fledged bean-to-bar chocolate company. She started small — with a tabletop melanger and just two pounds of Bolivian cacao — and made her first batch. Encouraged by enthusiastic feedback, she dove into the deep end of chocolate making, learning through experimentation, failure, and persistence. After hundreds of batches, Carobeans has grown from her home kitchen into a commercial facility and now supplies wholesale clients.

Caroline’s creativity shines in her recipes, like her award-winning Passionfruit, Orange, and Guava (POG) bar, which earned recognition for innovation at the Craft Chocolate Challenge. While Carobeans offers a rotation of seasonal and inventive inclusion bars, the heart of the brand is in celebrating single-origin cacao and telling the stories behind each origin — letting the unique flavors of the beans speak for themselves.