Students for Environmental Action (SEA) organized and sponsored a trip to Somerville, Mass. to visit the Taza Chocolate Factory on Feb. 6. The president of SEA, Hannah Pierce continued this annual event because students have enjoyed the chocolate tour for the past few years. The tour began with a greeting from the Taza Chocolate Factory clerk who then showed students around the store and introduced different types of Taza chocolate with sample pieces. Since chocolate is especially popular around Valentine’s Day, the Taza employees had the store decorated for the holiday.
“I enjoyed the trip to the Taza Chocolate Factory,” Vin Nuthalapati, a member of SEA said. “I signed up for this event on the SNHU Tickets site because I love chocolate and I like making new friends and I love networking with people.”
The tour of the factory, located inside the store, lasted for approximately one hour. The building carried a strong scent of cacao bean.
There are huge, modern machines and assembly lines equipped in different working zones. The clerk told students about the product process, how the brand started and answered questions about their chocolate.
Taza founder Alex Whitmore studied Spanish in Mexico and was inspired by the local hot chocolate there. He loved the unique texture and intense taste of it and decided to make his career in manufacturing this chocolate into a product. The name company name, “Taza,” means “cup” in Spanish.
Taza purchases the organic cacao beans from selected farm suppliers and completes the remaining process including the grinding, roasting, shaping, design, packaging, promoting and selling within the factory.
They use hand-carved Mexican traditional stone mills named Molinos to grind the cacao which preserves the natural flavor of the beans. Along with bringing the environmental friendly product to stores, Taza is a family-owned business.
