Colombia Forum

19naia
Joined 2014
Posts: 54

5 years ago

Why are Chocolate products so rare?

5 years ago

I keep seeing tales of Colombia chocolate production.
And seems natural Colombia be a prolific chocolate producer along with coffee.

What i don’t get is seeing all the bakeries and cake shops and how devoid of chocolate products they are. Bakeries on every block, it seems,
I have only really been to two cities in Colombia but that is a good enough hint even if someone comes here to say i have to go to a particular big city to find decent chocolate product selections.

I found stuff at a bakery that looked like chocolate and almost bought it before getting lucky enough to have an explanation that it is just colored to look like chocolate. No chocolate involved.
So then i ask what do they have that has chocolate ,and they said they have something flavored with Milo, the hot chocolate drink mix.
Sure i can find M&Ms, snickers ,Oreos, and all the rest of the big name junk food chocolate infused candies. Not the stuff for me.

Yes i did eventually find chocolate cake and brownies at a fancy shop in a mall, but the look of it and color of it was not enticing -especially in country showing almost no signs of chocolate cake concerns.

I have seen more negligent traffic wreck injuries here than i have seen worthwhile chocolate cake.

Chocolate icecream is an option but all i can find is Colombian Ice-cream as if they have banned any foreign brands of the stuff.
I usually settle for Magnum brand ice-cream sticks when it comes to a good chocolate fix but that is not anywhere i have been in Colombia. Magnum is all over Ecuador.
And yes i tried the colombian Icecream before now saying it was not worth the overpriced quantity of it.
Even for free, not the stuff for me.

Good thing i brought with me enough of my favorite chocolate mix from USA. Enough to last through 2 months here in Colombia.

I under stand the culture and taste differences across countires around the world, and know how to do without, but it is hard to make sense of Chocolate producing countries without doing such an easy thing as making a diverse chocolate product market at home.

I understand being an oil producing nation that does not make cars or engines to burn the oil in.
Or even a coffe producng nation that does not make coffee machines.
But making more chocolate products in already existing bakeries on every block of every city? That is hardly an issue and would in turn give the Colombian cocoa growers a domestic market to shield them from international markets that can decide any day they want, to source their import chocolate from somewhere else,

Makes no sense at all ,and i had many hours of chocolate deprivation -spent thinking this through.

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