795 Alex Whitmore: Founder & CEO of Taza

0:00Kara Goldin:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. You should know what that sound is. Starting something new isn't just hard, it's terrifying.

0:49Kara Goldin:So much work goes into this thing that you're not entirely sure will work out, and it can be hard to make that leap of faith. Trust me, I know. When I started Hint, I wasn't even sure what I was doing. What if no one wants unsweetened flavored water? What if no one buys my product? Now, I know that I was right in believing in myself and launching my business despite all the fears and hesitations. It also helps when you have a partner, including Shopify, on your side to help grow your business. One powerful move puts the future in your hands, starting with Shopify. It's the commerce platform behind millions of businesses worldwide, powering nearly 10 % of all e-commerce in the US from building a beautiful store with ready-to-use templates to managing inventory, payments, and shipping all in one place.

1:47Kara Goldin:Shopify gives you everything you need to run and grow your business. Tackle all those important tasks in one place from inventory to payments to analytics and more. No need to save multiple websites or try to figure out what platform is hosting the tool that you need. Everything is all in one place, making your life easier and your business operations smoother. With Shopify, 2026 is the year you stop planning and start selling. Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash Kara. Go to shopify.com slash Kara. That's shopify.com slash Kara. Support for today's episode comes from Fora, a modern travel agency built for people who love to plan travel and help others travel well.

2:44Kara Goldin:If planning trips lights you up, researching hotels tracking down the perfect reservation, and creating itineraries that feel effortless, you might already be doing more than just liking travel. You're curating experiences. You're thinking through details. You're making travel better for the people around you. At some point, you realize this is more than a hobby. That's where Fora comes in. Fora helps you turn your love of travel planning into a flexible, meaningful source of income. With best-in-class training, powerful booking technology, and a global community of experienced advisors, Fora gives you everything you need to build a travel business on your terms, alongside your job, your family, or whatever else you're balancing.

3:34Kara Goldin:As a Fora advisor, you get access to more than 7 ,000 preferred travel partners from iconic luxury brands to boutique gems. That means VIP perks for your clients, things like room upgrades, resort credits, and late checkout. The kind of elevated experiences most travelers never get on their own. And every hotel, cruise, or experience you book earns you a commission. Getting started can be as simple as planning trips for people you already know. Some people scroll travel inspiration, others bring it to life. If you've ever thought, I could do this, now's the time. Become a Fora Advisor today at ForaTravel.com slash Kara Golden.

4:20Kara Goldin:That's F-O-R-A travel.com slash Kara Golden. And make sure you tell them we sent you. ForaTravel.com slash Kara Golden. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Golden show. Today, I'm super excited to be joined by Alex Whitmore, who is the founder, well, co-founder and CEO of Taza Chocolate, also known as Taza, but the bold stone ground chocolate brand that has spent the last two decades started in the magic year of 2005, the same year that Hint started, challenging how chocolate is made, sourced, and talked about in the U.S. And Alex's journey began with a single cup of traditional stone ground chocolate in Mexico and an experience that completely changed how we thought about food and sourcing and business.

5:16Kara Goldin:And that moment sparked the creation of what he and his wife, Kathleen, back in 2005, that really started what we have today. Started, I should say. So since then, Alex has become one of the most quietly radical voices in chocolate. Taza was the first U.S. chocolate company to implement third-party certified direct trade cacao and the first to publicly disclose exactly what it pays cacao farmers as well. Cannot even wait to dig in more to that. And I'm really excited to hear how he's built a values-driven brand in a super challenging category and exactly what's happening right now in his world of chocolate too.

6:09Kara Goldin:So Alex, welcome to the show. So super excited to finally meet you and have you here. Likewise. Thanks so much for having me, Kara. I appreciate it. And I love your work. So thank you for having me. I'm honored. You should know what that sound is. Starting something new isn't just hard, it's terrifying. So much work goes into this thing that you're not entirely sure will work out. And it can be hard to make that leap of faith. Trust me, I know. When I started Hint, I wasn't even sure what I was doing. What if no one wants unsweetened flavored water? What if no one buys my product? Now I know that I was right in believing in myself and launching my business despite all the fears and hesitations.

6:57Kara Goldin:It also helps when you have a partner, including Shopify, on your side to help grow your business. One powerful move puts the future in your hands, starting with Shopify. It's the commerce platform behind millions of businesses worldwide, powering nearly 10 % of all e-commerce in the U.S. from building a beautiful store with ready-to-use templates to managing inventory, payments, and shipping all in one place. Shopify gives you everything you need to run and grow your business. Tackle all those important tasks in one place from inventory to payments to analytics and more. No need to save multiple websites or try to figure out what platform is hosting the tool that you need, everything is all in one place, making your life easier and your business operations smoother.

7:53Kara Goldin:With Shopify, 2026 is the year you stop planning and start selling. Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash Kara. Go to shopify.com slash Kara. That's shopify.com slash Kara. Support for today's episode comes from Fora, a modern travel agency built for people who love to plan travel and help others travel well. If planning trips lights you up, researching hotels, tracking down the perfect reservation, and creating itineraries that feel effortless, you might already be doing more than just liking travel. You're curating experiences. You're thinking through details.

8:43Kara Goldin:You're making travel better for the people around you. At some point, you realize this is more than a hobby. That's where Fora comes in. Fora helps you turn your love of travel planning into a flexible, meaningful source of income. With best-in-class training, powerful booking technology, and a global community of experienced advisors, Fora gives you everything you need to build a travel business on your terms, alongside your job, your family, or whatever else you're balancing. As a Fora advisor, you get access to more than 7 ,000 preferred travel partners from iconic luxury brands to boutique gems.

9:26Kara Goldin:That means VIP perks for your clients, things like room upgrades, resort credits, and late checkout. the kind of elevated experiences most travelers never get on their own. And every hotel, cruise, or experience you book earns you a commission. Getting started can be as simple as planning trips for people you already know. Some people scroll travel inspiration. Others bring it to life. If you've ever thought, I could do this, now's the time. Become a Fora advisor today at ForaTravel.com slash Kara Golden. That's F-O-R-A travel.com slash Kara Golden. And make sure you tell them we sent you. ForaTravel.com slash Kara Golden.

10:13Kara Goldin:Thank you so much. Okay, so in 30 to 60 seconds, give or take, for listeners just discovering Taza, How do you describe the brand and what makes it fundamentally different from most chocolate on shelves today? Yeah, sure. So I'm sure you're familiar with the massive wall of chocolate bars that you might encounter when you go into your local grocery store. We are we compete in that category, chocolate candy, and we are what we call chocolate makers. We were manufactured. We're a manufacturing company that's been around our 20th year now. And we make a really unique style of stone ground organic chocolate.

10:58And what makes us different from so many of those other brands that you see on that on the shelves in the grocery store is that we actually make chocolate from scratch, from the raw agricultural ingredients, the cacao beans, the cane sugar, any of the other ingredients we might use to make a product, almonds, hazelnuts, that kind of thing. And we actually roast the cocoa, we winnow the cocoa, and we grind it right here in our factory in the Boston area in Somerville. So that is an incredible difference. And it's something we're really proud of because it allows us to completely control the flavor.

11:34We source the best quality organic certified cacao beans directly from farmers and export operators. and we use that cacao to grind a truly unique, intense cacao-flavored chocolate product. So that's something that we've been doing for 20 years and we do it here in our factory with a team of about 35 people and we couldn't be more proud to come to work every day.

12:01Kara Goldin:You should know what that sound is. Starting something new isn't just hard, it's terrifying. So much work goes into this thing that you're not entirely sure will work out. And it can be hard to make that leap of faith. Trust me, I know. When I started Hint, I wasn't even sure what I was doing. What if no one wants unsweetened flavored water? What if no one buys my product? Now, I know that I was right in believing in myself and launching my business despite all the fears and hesitations. It also helps when you have a partner, including Shopify on your side to help grow your business. One powerful move puts the future in your hands, starting with Shopify.

12:47Kara Goldin:It's the commerce platform behind millions of businesses worldwide, powering nearly 10 % of all e-commerce in the U.S. from building a beautiful store with ready-to-use templates to managing inventory, payments, and shipping all in one place. Shopify gives you everything you need to run and grow your business. Tackle all those important tasks in one place from inventory to payments to analytics and more. No need to save multiple websites or try to figure out what platform is hosting the tool that you need. Everything is all in one place, making your life easier and your business operations smoother.

13:31Kara Goldin:With Shopify, 2026 is the year you stop planning and start selling. Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash cara. Go to shopify.com slash cara. That's shopify.com slash cara. Support for today's episode comes from Fora, a modern travel agency built for people who love to plan travel and help others travel well. If planning trips lights you up, researching hotels, tracking down the perfect reservation, and creating itineraries that feel effortless, you might already be doing more than just liking travel. You're curating experiences. You're thinking through details.

14:20Kara Goldin:You're making travel better for the people around you. At some point, you realize this is more than a hobby. That's where Fora comes in. Fora helps you turn your love of travel planning into a flexible, meaningful source of income. With best-in-class training, powerful booking technology, and a global community of experienced advisors, Fora gives you everything you need to build a travel business on your terms. alongside your job, your family, or whatever else you're balancing. As a four advisor, you get access to more than 7 ,000 preferred travel partners from iconic luxury brands to boutique gems.

15:03Kara Goldin:That means VIP perks for your clients, things like room upgrades, resort credits, and late checkout. The kind of elevated experiences most travelers never get on their own. and every hotel cruise or experience you book earns you a commission getting started can be as simple as planning trips for people you already know some people scroll travel inspiration others bring it to life if you've ever thought i could do this now's the time become a for advisor today at foratravel.com slash Kara Golden. That's F-O-R-A travel.com slash Kara Golden. And make sure you tell them we sent you. Foratravel.com slash Kara Golden.

15:51Kara Goldin:Yeah. Very, very cool. So were you a huge chocolate lover prior to having this experience in Mexico? Yeah. So when we first began the company, I was really inspired to start my own business. I didn't know what I wanted to do at the time, but I was really into food and slow food and where food came from and food, culinary traditions. And I wanted to celebrate something and bring it and share it with people that I knew and also people from my hometown, from Boston and all around the country. And that's what we ended up doing. We found this amazing culinary tradition from where cacao is indigenous to originally, which is the Mesoamerican, Central American region.

16:44And they've been making chocolate products to drink for thousands of years. And we saw this incredible tradition and we got to share this. And that's exactly what we did with Taza Chocolate.

17:00Kara Goldin:So you and your wife started this company together in 2005. What were you doing before? Yeah, so I was working for a self-service on-demand car rental company called Zipcar. It's basically like you could rent a car just by going online, and then you could access the car anywhere in the city kind of thing. They had cars parked all over the city. I was working for that company for this amazing founder, another amazing founder, Robin Chase. And she was honestly an inspiration to me personally that you could start with a crazy idea and actually make it work. And that's exactly what she did with Zipcar.

17:44And it really inspired me to start my own business. And so after working at Zipcar for several years, I decided to go out on my own and start Taza.

17:54Kara Goldin:You should know what that sound is. Starting something new isn't just hard, it's terrifying. So much work goes into this thing that you're not entirely sure will work out, and it can be hard to make that leap of faith. Trust me, I know. When I started Hint, I wasn't even sure what I was doing. What if no one wants unsweetened flavored water? What if no one buys my product? Now, I know that I was right in believing in myself and launching my business despite all the fears and hesitations. It also helps when you have a partner, including Shopify, on your side to help grow your business. One powerful move puts the future in your hands, starting with Shopify.

18:41Kara Goldin:It's the commerce platform behind millions of businesses worldwide, powering nearly 10 % of all e-commerce in the U.S. From building a beautiful store with ready-to-use templates to managing inventory, payments, and shipping all in one place. Shopify gives you everything you need to run and grow your business. Tackle all those important tasks in one place from inventory to payments to analytics and more. No need to save multiple websites or try to figure out what platform is hosting the tool that you need. Everything is all in one place, making your life easier and your business operations smoother.

19:25Kara Goldin:With Shopify, 2026 is the year you stop planning and start selling. Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash Kara. Go to shopify.com slash Kara. That's shopify.com slash Kara. Support for today's episode comes from Fora, a modern travel agency built for people who love to plan travel and help others travel well. If planning trips lights you up, researching hotels, tracking down the perfect reservation, and creating itineraries that feel effortless, you might already be doing more than just liking travel. You're curating experiences. You're thinking through details.

20:14Kara Goldin:You're making travel better for the people around you. At some point, you realize this is more than a hobby. That's where FORA comes in. FORA helps you turn your love of travel planning into a flexible, meaningful source of income. With best-in-class training, powerful booking technology, and a global community of experienced advisors, 4A gives you everything you need to build a travel business on your terms, alongside your job, your family, or whatever else you're balancing. As a 4A advisor, you get access to more than 7 ,000 preferred travel partners from iconic luxury brands to boutique gems.

20:57Kara Goldin:That means VIP perks for your clients, things like room upgrades, resort credits, and late checkout. The kind of elevated experiences most travelers never get on their own. And every hotel, cruise, or experience you book earns you a commission. Getting started can be as simple as planning trips for people you already know. Some people scroll travel inspiration, others bring it to life. If you've ever thought, I could do this, now's the time. Become a FORA advisor today at foratravel.com slash Kara Golden. That's F-O-R-A travel.com slash Kara Golden. And make sure you tell them we sent you. foratravel.com slash Kara Golden.

21:45Kara Goldin:Very cool. So you came back from that trip to Mexico and started experimenting, did you think that you were actually building a company at that point? Or was it just kind of playing in the kitchen, satisfying your curiosity? What was kind of going through your head at that moment? Yeah, well, the original business idea was actually for a cafe. I wanted to start a chocolate cafe. And I couldn't really, I could raise some money from friends and family. This was before all the crazy private equity getting into the food business that happened in that, you know, I think after that time period. And, and I couldn't really raise enough money.

22:28Like I would have had to spend the $250 ,000 in capital that I was able to raise entirely on like building out some landlord's cafe environment. And then I was like, if it doesn't work, I just lose all of that money and I lose my chance at my dream. So I just, I couldn't see myself doing that. And then furthermore, Kathleen encouraged me to get a job working at a coffee shop just so I get a sense of what it's like running a cafe. And I really did not like the idea of doing that. So we actually started, we pivoted. I really knew I wanted to start a business. I'd kind of raised the money and we pivoted to actually manufacturing a chocolate bar, chocolate products, which at the time, the only company really doing that was actually in your neck of the woods in San Francisco, Scharfenberger Chocolate.

23:21And that was started by two guys that were incredibly, you know, focused on really high quality food and the whole slow food movement that was really bubbling out in the Bay Area at the time because of Alice Waters and Chez Panisse and all that farm to table stuff that was going on. And so that was really the only company we had to look up to when we were starting. And the rest is history.

23:53Kara Goldin:So it takes a lot of courage to start a company, but also, you know, you hadn't been in the food industry. So there's a lot of unknown. What did you do first when you were looking around, it sounds like, at kind of the overall category and industry? And I guess, what gave you the courage to think, I can go and start this company? And what was that moment all about? Well, I think it was more naivete than courage. But I think, you know, at the time, it's easy to look back now and see what was going on. But at the time, you know, we really didn't know what we were doing. We just were like, okay, there's a bunch of specialty shops.

24:43We'll make a product. We'll go to the specialty shop. We'll ask them to sell it. And if they do, maybe they'll pay us. Um, and we were, you know, I was in my twenties and we, we, we didn't, you know, we didn't have a whole lot of obligations besides putting food on our own plates. Um, and we basically started making chocolate and bringing it around to different retail stores and got people to, to, to take it. And it's, it's hard to remember what the world was like back in 2005, but there were, you know, the, the, the, the organic lettuce in the grocery store was the really sad wilty lettuce that only the hippies bought.

25:21You know, it was a different time and farmers markets were really just getting started. It was like the beginning of that era. And so we actually started selling chocolate bars at farmers markets. We would have, you know, we had this bicycle trailer that we would pedal to the, from the factory to the farmers market and we would sell chocolate bars to people buying their local produce.

25:46Kara Goldin:I love that. You just reminded me of the early days of Hint where we had a bike and we were handing out bottles of Hint from the bike. It was, yeah, good times for sure. So stone ground chocolate has a very distinct texture and flavor. Why was it important for you not to smooth or modernize it for mass appeal? Yeah, well, when we first started, we started making really traditional Mexican style drinking chocolate. And then we made a bar that was kind of my own creation that was really like a craft chocolate bar, but it was still kind of gritty. And it was partly that way because we didn't have the money for the machines to make it smooth.

26:29But it was also partly that way because I was really inspired and loved that really rustic, minimally processed flavor experience that you from the Mexican style chocolate. So by taking a really high quality ingredient and very minimally processing it and kind of, kind of molding it into exactly the flavor that I wanted people to have, that was at the time, like really, really gelled with what was going on in the food movement, where people were really trying to simply prepare foods that were really high quality to begin with, with grilling or with just very simple vegetable preparations. That was what was going on in the slow food movement at the time.

27:12And that was really kind of also an inspiration to me beyond the really rustic Mexican tradition of drinking chocolate. So those were the kind of the things that drove me there to begin with. But furthermore, because chocolate is such a competitive category, there's so many brands and products out there. There's so many ways that people consume chocolate. I really wanted to make sure we had something unique and we weren't competing with just a bunch of other mass market products. And we needed to be differentiated. We needed to have something that was niche, that was our niche that we could really own.

27:46And that was texture.

27:48Kara Goldin:And how many SKUs did you launch with initially? Well, it's funny. I mean, launch, I don't know. I mean, we didn't really have like a big go-to-market plan. We're not really marketers. So it was like some weeks we had like five products that we would bring to the farmer's market and other weeks we would have three or seven. So it wasn't, there wasn't like a moment where we were like, launch, here we go. It was really a much more slow build. And, you know, early on SKUs came and went, you know, depending on what we were, what packaging we were able to print that week kind of thing. So, but originally we had a, we had our, our, our traditional, um, Mexican style, uh, cinnamon chocolate disc.