Over a decade ago, farmers in Pingtung’s Neipu Township decided to try planting cocoa seedlings in the shadow of their areca palms. They never expected these tropical rainforest plants to thrive like they did in the hot, sunny climate of Pingtung.

Zhang Tianyi and Chen Jiahui were both students of agribusiness management at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology when, during a summer internship program, they had their first encounter with local cocoa farmers.

The two, both supporters of local agriculture, discovered that Taiwan’s cocoa fruit had a pleasantly fruity, sour flavor and a nutty fragrance. They realized that if they could process this high-quality cocoa into chocolate, they could provide the farmers with a new avenue for sales, while if more of the trees were planted, possibly even outnumbering the palms, they could help protect the soil.

Since co-founding Chomeet in the fall of 2014, Zhang Tianyi has developed several new flavors of chocolate. The most distinctive of them is shown at bottom right in the photo: chocolate in the shape of pig’s-blood cake. Topped off with roselle petals from Pingtung’s Chuanyong Farm, its appearance is as memorable as its taste.

Finding the secret recipe

With these ideas in mind, the chocolate-loving Zhang buried his head in books, reading up on chocolate-making techniques.

“I started off by enrolling in professional chocolate-making courses, but I found most of the teachers were holding something back. Maybe they didn’t want to give away their secrets. And so I just had to hit the school library and pore through the literature, then go home and experiment,” says Zhang. He explains that the production process is complex, with many fine details that can impact the taste of the final product.

After the fruit is picked and the seeds extracted, those seeds must then be fermented, dried, roasted, and ground into cocoa mass before being melted down and processed. Each step involves particular methods, and if anything is omitted along the way, the whole flavor of the resulting chocolate will be affected.

Zhang’s partner Chen Jiahui says that part of the motivation for starting the business was the encouragement of one of her graduate-school professors. “First we set up a little workshop and tried making product to sell online for an entrepreneurship course. When the professor heard about our idea of incorporating local agricultural produce, he encouraged us to apply to for a young entrepreneurs’ grant and work toward starting our own real business.”

With their professor’s help, the pair successfully made it through the preliminary round of the Longterm Smile Competition with a proposal built around agricultural R&D as a creative opportunity. The chance to take part in the finals of the competition was exciting, and while they didn’t end up winning, the experience made them more confident in future endeavors.

Zhang Tianyi actively works on flavors incorporating local agricultural produce.

Reaching for the stars

“Boosted by that experience,” says Zhang, “we started getting more involved in various competitions for young entrepreneurs. For us, the whole process was like a trial run for starting an actual business.” They continued with these trial runs until 2014, when they finally walked away with a first place award, winning NT$500,000 in the Ministry of Education’s U-START College and Universities Graduates Entrepreneur Program. With this, they were now ready, willing, and able to start their company, launching the Chomeet Chocolate brand. Then in 2015, when they received a young entrepreneurs’ grant through Taichung City’s Reach for the Stars project, they found their first business location—Taichung’s Guangfu New Village.

As it turned out, getting the business started was the easy part. Earlier, having been unable to find a commercial cocoa bean supplier in Taiwan, the pair had had to use imported cocoa, which had raised questions among the reviewers of their entrepreneurship project. Later, they took a big order from their school, which meant they had to produce a large quantity of a new soy-sauce-flavored chocolate by special request of the school. The experience was bittersweet for Zhang; “I just took the order without thinking, and then our teachers had these expectations and NPUST’s soy sauce is pretty famous.... The first batches were terrible, and I had to try 50 or 60 times before I found a way to cut the umami of the soy sauce with a sour flavor.” With all the energy and commitment that only a newcomer can summon, the two forged ahead with their experiments, ultimately creating a new classic flavor.

Chocolate made with coffee from Pingtung and red quinoa from the Aboriginal village of Tikuvulu.

Supporting farmers and developing flavors

Zhang spends hours developing new flavors at the firm’s Guangfu workshop, and he remains as committed as ever to their initial desire to work with small local farmers.

Most recently, he has been working on incorporating the coffee and red quinoa of the Aboriginal village of Tikuvulu in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township into new chocolate flavors. He has also produced a flavor that includes a filling made with Taiwanese high mountain oolong tea, a flavorful merger of Eastern and Western flavors, as well as a stream of new cocoa drinks, including cocoa winter melon tea and cocoa Earl Grey tea. Chomeet’s latest product is a French-style pig’s-blood-cake chocolate bar, which is made to resemble ordinary pig’s-blood cake. Every weekend eager chocolate enthusiasts make their way to the workshop to try this unusual combination.

It has been nearly a year since Zhang and Chen started Chomeet, and Zhang says that while business is steady at the moment, he wouldn’t say they’ve developed a fully mature business model just yet. They continue to adjust their revenue model, and they’re always watching which flavors are popular with the public. The pair also travel to different weekend markets around Taiwan to set up stalls and introduce their products and their brand spirit, hoping to get people to see Taiwanese agricultural products in a new light.

As for the future, Zhang seems optimistic, although he says he still worries about each new product and each new set of sales figures. He emphasizes that when starting their own businesses, young entrepreneurs need to rely on their own efforts at all stages, from product planning and production to sales and marketing. There’s always more to learn, and these two will continue working hard to create uniquely Taiwanese chocolate, and one day even to attract the attention of chocolate lovers around the world.

Authentic Taiwanese chocolate has a distinctive aroma. The picture shows a new product, the “drink stirrer,” which can be used to flavor hot drinks. (courtesy of Chen Jiahui)

On average, each cocoa tree produces 100–200 fruits a year. With their red, green, yellow, and purple hues, Taiwan’s cocoa fruits are a colorful sight.

Taichung City’s Reach for the Stars project helps aspiring young entrepreneurs realize their dreams. Zhang Tianyi and his twin brother Zhang Tianyan, after receiving funding from the project, set up shop in Taichung’s Guangfu New Village, aiming to show the world what Taiwan can accomplish in the chocolate sphere.