Hawaii — Kuaiwi Farm
Big Island, Hawaii
Single-estate cacao grown on the slopes of Mauna Loa. Owner Bob Cooper has been farming there for 30 years. We use this for our 72% Hawaiian dark bar — earthy, with a hint of molasses.
The Aline Nasseh story
Hand-painted chocolate, made one batch at a time
Aline started making chocolate in 2018 from her apartment kitchen in Toronto. Eight years later, she runs a 1,400 sq ft studio in North York with a team of 4, a production calendar booked 6 weeks out, and a wait list for wedding favours from May to October every year.
This page is the long version of the story. Skip to the process or the team if you're in a hurry.
How it started
Aline grew up in Lyon, France. Her grandmother made chocolates for the family every Christmas — hand-rolled truffles, candied orange peel dipped in dark chocolate, the kind of work that takes three days and disappears in three hours. She learned the patience before she learned the recipes.
She moved to Toronto in 2014 for a marketing job she didn't love. The chocolate stayed a hobby until 2018, when she took a 4-week course at the Ecole Chocolat in Vancouver and came back determined to do it for real.
She sold her first 12 boxes at the Dufferin Grove farmers' market in October 2018. By the end of 2019 she was wholesaling to 6 retailers. In March 2020 (the pandemic) she lost all 6 accounts in two weeks, then pivoted to direct shipping and the business doubled in size by the end of the year. She moved into the current North York studio in 2022.
Today the studio runs Monday to Friday, makes about 1,200 bonbons a week, and ships across Canada. Aline still hand-rolls every batch on a marble slab her grandmother gave her.
"I don't think of this as a chocolate business. I think of it as a small-batch-food business that happens to make chocolate. The chocolate is just the medium — what we're really making is something to give someone, or to give yourself, on a day that matters."
Aline doesn't take herself too seriously. She cries at the end of every chocolate-making class she teaches, and she has a slight obsession with the smell of toasted hazelnuts that she says she can never recreate properly outside the studio.
How a bonbon gets made
Each bonbon takes four days. Here's what that looks like.
Day 1
Tempering & moulding
We temper the chocolate to 31°C (seed method) and pour it into polycarbonate moulds. The moulds get flipped, drained, and the shells set overnight. About 200 bonbons per mould.
Day 2
Filling
Caramels, ganaches, pralines — each flavour has its own filling cooked in small batches the morning of. Piped by hand into the set shells. The shells are about 4mm thick; the filling about 8mm.
Day 3
Sealing & painting
A thin layer of tempered chocolate seals the bottom. Then the hand-painting: each bonbon gets a unique design with coloured cocoa butter. No two are exactly alike — that's the point.
Day 4
Setting & packing
The painted bonbons set overnight in a 16°C tempering room. Next morning, we pop them out, sort, and pack into our signature boxes with a freshness card. Ready to ship.
Where the cacao comes from
We buy single-origin cacao beans direct from four farms. We pay roughly 2x the world market price because the quality is better and the farmers are better treated. Here are the people we work with:
Ecuador — Hacienda Victoria
Los Ríos, Ecuador
Family-run farm, third generation. We use this for our 72% Ecuadorian dark — what becomes the shell of the Salted Caramel. Floral, low acidity, long finish.
Madagascar — Bertil Akesson's farm
Sambirano Valley, Madagascar
One of the most awarded cacao farms in the world. Bright, fruity, almost citrus. We use this for our 70% Madagascar bar and the Espresso Truffle.
Peru — Valley of the Apurímac
Cusco region, Peru
Cooperative of 47 small farmers. Nutty, balanced, makes a great single-origin 70%. We blend it into our milk chocolate.
The team
5 of us, full-time, in the North York studio.
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Aline Nasseh
Founder & Chocolate Maker
Started the kitchen in 2018. Does the tempering, the recipe R&D, and the wholesale accounts. French-Canadian, terrible at delegating, very good at chocolate.
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Mei Kobayashi
Head of Production
Joined in 2021. Runs the day-to-day on the floor. Trained as a pastry chef at George Brown, has the steadiest hand in the studio — does all the corporate painting.
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Ravi Thakur
Operations & Shipping
Joined in 2023. Owns fulfilment — the box-packing, the label-printing, the cold-chain logistics. Former logistics manager at a meal-kit company. Probably the reason your order arrives intact.
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Jules Côté
Cacao Sourcing & Quality
Joined in 2024. Travels to our partner farms twice a year, runs bean-to-bar R&D, and is the only person in the studio who can temper chocolate by sound. (Yes, by sound.)
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Sasha Park
Customer & Wholesale
Joined in 2024. Runs the inbox, manages the 12+ stockists, and organises the corporate & wedding pipeline. Will probably answer your email within an hour.
What we care about
1. Real chocolate, not chocolate-flavoured anything.
We use real cocoa butter, real sugar, real fruit purées. No artificial flavours, no "natural flavours" hiding MSG, no palm oil, no soy lecithin unless we have to (we don't, in 90% of our products).
2. Paid well, not paid-always-well, but paid well.
Everyone in the studio makes at or above Toronto's living wage, plus profit sharing, plus a yearly educational stipend. Aline took a 30% pay cut in 2023 to fund the team raises.
3. Small enough to know your box by name.
If you email us, you get a reply from a person who's made your box. We don't have a customer service department. We have a kitchen with a shared inbox.
4. Honest about what we don't know.
We don't have all the answers on sustainability, on fair trade, on cocoa farming. We try, we learn, we update this page when we figure out more.
As featured in
- Toronto Life — "The best small-batch chocolatier in the city" (2024)
- The Globe and Mail — "Aline Nasseh's bonbons are worth the trip" (2023)
- BlogTO — Top 10 chocolate gifts for corporate gifting (2024)
- Globe Style — "How Aline Nasseh built a chocolate business in a pandemic" (2022)
Come visit
The studio is open Mon-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat 11am-4pm. Stop by for a free 3-piece tasting — no appointment needed, just walk in. We love meeting the people who eat our chocolate.
877 Alness St, Unit 22 · North York, ON M3J 2X4