Chocri-unique

Starting next year, America gets a taste of chocolate exactly the way they want it. (barely legal and extravagant, all in the name of Jesus?)

The company allows the consumer to make their own variety of customized chocolate, with over 90 toppings to choose from. This is similar to the NIKE ID project and a Chicago company that makes custom energy bars (with the option to design unique packaging), but leave it to the Germans to use those precision brains of theirs to find the best product application. If you want to learn about how chocolate is made, they'll tell you. And you can even throw your two cents in in toppings polls. You won't be surprised that this guy works there.

To absolve themselves of the guilt of making you fat and outsmarting your willpower, they are undertaking some noble pursuits with their business. First, "for the sake of nature but foremost to protect the rights and lives of the cocoa farmers," they use only fair trade chocolate, which is different from, say, rough trade chocolate that is found in West Hollywood. Fair trade means the prices paid to the farmers don't require them to work in bad conditions or to make their children work in order to afford a living. Now that guy from Coldplay can chill out.

Also, they only sell organic chocolate. That doesn't only mean the cocoa used is organic, but also the sugar and all the other ingredients, like the milk in milk chocolate. Granted, to be rated organic just requires different criteria to be met, but studies have shown that organic goods are not any more healthy or better for you than other types. Non-organic? In-organic? Un-organic?

And one percentage of their revenues goes directly to the organization DIV Kinder, which supports and protects children on the Ivory Coast. The Ivory Coast is the biggest exporter of cocoa beans on this planet, along with piracy and child slavery. You can not customize those for export or order yet. Customers get a chance to donate a small amount at checkout, just to satisfy their Western civilized decadence.

The invitation-only launch is January 5, 2010.