Cocoa Asante was founded in 2018 by Ella Livingston, a Ghanaian-American who made it her mission to provide chocolate of the best quality using cacao from her home country Ghana. We distribute our chocolate to businesses in the Chattanooga area. Customers can purchase directly from us online as well.
The depth of flavor and the silky smooth texture of our chocolates provide an experience like none other. We take pride in the exquisite taste we are able to produce through the use of fresh ingredients of the highest quality.
The depth of flavor and the silky smooth texture of our chocolates provide an experience like none other. We take pride in the exquisite taste we are able to produce through the use of fresh ingredients of the highest quality.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode
00:02 of Shop Essence Live in partnership
00:05 with the new Voices family.
00:06 This is a program we bring you every single week
00:09 where we highlight two new black-owned businesses to shop.
00:12 And as we get closer and closer to the holidays,
00:16 you know you have people to buy for,
00:17 you know you have people to buy for,
00:18 you have no idea what to buy.
00:20 Well, you have come to the right place
00:21 because we are highlighting
00:23 some luxury black-owned brands today.
00:26 And I'm so excited.
00:27 I tell you, if I got either one of these things,
00:30 I would be over the moon and happy.
00:32 Up first, have you ever had chocolate?
00:36 Probably, but have you ever had designer chocolate?
00:41 Probably the best chocolate you've ever had,
00:43 not only in taste, but looks beautiful.
00:45 Well, we are about to be joined by Ella Livingston.
00:49 She is of Coco Asante.
00:51 Hey, Ella.
00:52 - Hi, how's it going?
00:54 - It's going so great.
00:55 And I am just so excited to try out your chocolates.
00:58 It's my favorite.
00:59 So before we get into the products though,
01:03 you gotta let the people know,
01:04 how did you come up with this incredible brand?
01:08 - Absolutely.
01:09 So a lot of people think that I'm a chocoholic,
01:11 but I am actually not a chocoholic.
01:13 I just so happen to try amazing chocolate
01:17 while studying abroad in Tokyo, Japan.
01:20 And I just wanted to be able to bring the experience
01:22 to my customers or to people here in the US
01:26 and also combine it with my family's history
01:28 as Coco Farmers.
01:29 So Coco Asante is my way of honoring my family's legacy
01:33 as Coco Farmers back home in Ghana,
01:35 while also providing an exquisite product
01:38 and experience for my customers.
01:39 - I don't know what kind of magic fairy dust
01:44 they have in Ghana,
01:45 but if y'all have never had chocolate
01:48 made from cocoa from Ghana, you are missing out.
01:51 Can you talk a little bit about,
01:53 even how you source the cocoa,
01:56 like what is that process like for you?
01:59 - Absolutely, yeah.
02:00 So I'll start with what we want to do.
02:03 So we are committed to becoming bean to bar,
02:06 which means that we're gonna be processing
02:07 the cacao beans ourselves.
02:09 And our goal is to source directly
02:11 from my family's farm in Ghana.
02:13 Now, once we're gonna be able to do so,
02:15 we'll be completely unique.
02:17 We'll be one of the few vertically integrated companies
02:20 that's able to source from their own family farm in Ghana.
02:22 So we're really excited to be able to achieve this goal.
02:25 But while we grow,
02:27 we currently do have another company
02:29 that processes our cacao.
02:31 They do source the cocoa beans from Ghana.
02:33 We just don't process it ourselves.
02:35 We take it through the last few steps.
02:37 And then we of course create all of our fillings in-house,
02:39 the decor in-house, everything else.
02:42 So, yeah.
02:43 - Do you guys hear the pipeline of generational wealth
02:48 that Ella is building right now?
02:50 We must, we must, we must,
02:52 not only taste these delectable chocolates,
02:54 but when you buy here at Shop Essence Live,
02:56 you're buying directly from these black owned brands.
02:59 Before we get into these delicious chocolates,
03:02 you got a promo code that you're hooking us up with.
03:05 Can you let us know what it is?
03:07 - Yes.
03:08 So just for our audience,
03:09 you guys have a special code.
03:11 It is ESSENCE15, all caps, ESSENCE15,
03:15 and that gets you 15% off your total order.
03:18 - Come on through.
03:20 Okay.
03:21 Now it's time to get into this chocolate.
03:23 - Yes, the best part.
03:25 - The best part.
03:26 What's the first one you wanna highlight here?
03:28 - Okay, so the first one I wanna start with
03:30 is the black box.
03:31 That is, we titled it BGM,
03:34 and that's because we used the Black Girl Magic
03:38 by the Bright Lady. - Ooh, the McBride sisters.
03:41 - The Bride sisters.
03:42 I am a fan, and like,
03:46 I wanted to create a beautiful dark chocolate
03:48 and red wine bonbon because I love both,
03:50 and what better way to do so
03:52 than using the McBride sisters?
03:53 So if you'll open your box,
03:56 what I love about our packaging is it slides open,
03:59 so it creates a really, like, different feeling.
04:02 It's not just opening a regular box,
04:04 and then you-- - Like it's an experience.
04:06 Okay. - It's that experience, right?
04:08 You remove the gold tab,
04:09 and then it reveals beautiful chocolates inside.
04:13 - Guys, guys, guys, guys, look at this.
04:17 First of all, it feels like
04:19 I'm not even supposed to eat this.
04:22 - We do have customers that actually
04:23 won't eat their chocolates,
04:24 and they'll just freeze them forever
04:26 because they feel like it's too pretty, you know?
04:29 - This is chocolate?
04:31 Oh my gosh, okay, so look at the bonbon.
04:33 Look at that, it's like marble.
04:37 - Yes, and we go through a lot of work
04:39 to make our chocolates not just taste amazing,
04:42 but also look really beautiful.
04:44 - So pretty.
04:46 I guess I'm just going to have to take one for the team
04:49 and eat this chocolate for you guys.
04:51 - I think so.
04:52 - What I wouldn't do for you guys, y'all.
04:56 - I'll never get tired of it, oh my goodness.
05:05 - First of all, it's a whole bottle of wine in here.
05:11 - It is. - It's wine.
05:14 - You can taste the wine
05:15 in the notes of cherry and all the red berries
05:17 that come from the red blend.
05:19 - Oh my gosh, it takes you through all of the,
05:24 like you have the nice, smooth, delicious, dark chocolate,
05:29 but then the red wine hits you.
05:33 It is so delicious.
05:35 This is BGM, once again, from Coco Asante,
05:39 and it has Black Girl Magic wine in it.
05:43 If you're a Black Girl Magic fan, McBride Sisters,
05:45 and you love it, can you just imagine like getting this
05:50 and a bottle of Black Girl Magic wine
05:52 and giving that as a gift to someone
05:54 that would just be such a really, really nice gift.
05:59 Great gift for your boss, great gift for that person
06:01 that you know, your rich auntie,
06:03 you don't know what to get her.
06:04 She would love this.
06:06 So good.
06:07 All right, what's the next one that you want to highlight?
06:09 A reminder to everyone, Essence 15.
06:13 Put these in your cart, use the code,
06:15 and you get 15% off.
06:16 Really, really great deal.
06:18 What's next?
06:19 - All right, I think next we should go
06:21 to the original variety.
06:22 So the original variety has dark milk and white.
06:25 Opens up beautifully.
06:29 - That is just gorgeous.
06:35 Really beautiful.
06:36 All right, this has a variety.
06:40 - Yes, now you get to decide
06:42 if you want dark milk or white.
06:44 Now dark is gonna be the,
06:46 if you'll look closely, you'll see like--
06:47 - I see the bottom.
06:48 - Yeah, the middle two are milk
06:50 and then the last ones are two whites.
06:53 Feel free, I mean, you know, deal with it.
06:56 - I mean, I feel like it would be unfair for me to choose.
06:59 I feel like they all want me to face all of them.
07:02 (laughing)
07:03 So, the white chocolate.
07:05 - I'm gonna go for milk.
07:09 It's been a while since I've done milk.
07:11 (chewing)
07:13 Oh my God.
07:16 So smooth, so delicious.
07:21 - It's the texture in the center
07:22 that does it for me every time.
07:25 - So can you explain what's in the center of these?
07:27 - Absolutely, so,
07:29 woo, that was good, sorry.
07:32 For the original flavors,
07:33 so the dark one has a dark shell
07:35 and a dark chocolate ganache.
07:37 The milk one has a milk shell
07:38 and a milk chocolate ganache.
07:40 And then the white chocolate has a white shell,
07:42 white chocolate ganache.
07:43 Some of our flavors are a little bit more intricate.
07:46 So, while we only have two Bon Bon flavors here,
07:48 we do have some like Mangonada,
07:51 Mangonada that has a mango pate a fruit
07:54 that we made from scratch using fresh mangoes
07:56 and Hapone peppers.
07:58 And we use a local company to source the peppers from.
08:02 We also have a layer of actually dark chocolate
08:06 with coffee in the ganache.
08:08 And the coffee comes from a veteran owned company.
08:11 One of our most popular flavors
08:12 is actually Chai Pecan Caramel.
08:14 It's not available right today,
08:16 but it will be soon.
08:18 Oh yeah, and that one was rated a,
08:21 I think it was a 9.3 or 9.8,
08:24 one of those two by Keith Lee.
08:26 And he's a guy that-
08:27 - Oh, Keith Lee.
08:29 - Yes, we are fans of Keith Lee.
08:31 - He tells nothing but the truth,
08:33 so you already know.
08:35 - So if he likes it, you're gonna love it.
08:37 - Yes, if he likes it, it's just so, so great.
08:40 And you can tell that it comes from really,
08:44 really great quality ingredients.
08:46 'Cause sometimes nowadays when you buy,
08:48 you know, just a regular hot chocolate,
08:51 I mean, chocolate bars, it tastes a little bit waxy.
08:55 Like you don't really get the melt in your mouth
08:58 quality that you're getting with Coco Asante.
09:00 So good.
09:01 - Absolutely, and that's 'cause there's a lot of additives.
09:04 There's a lot of fillers in their chocolates,
09:06 but we try to keep our chocolates,
09:08 I don't wanna say pure,
09:09 'cause it's not, you know, dairy-free or vegan,
09:11 but we try to keep it as authentic to the flavor
09:14 of the cacao beans as possible, so.
09:16 - Yeah, all right, you have one more,
09:19 which is probably aesthetically my favorite.
09:21 And I don't know if I can bring myself to eat this one,
09:25 'cause it's so pretty.
09:26 - Thank you.
09:27 - But what's the last one?
09:28 - This is gonna be our dark bar.
09:30 So for the dark bar, yeah, get a little close
09:33 so I can get that, there we go.
09:34 I love the packaging on this one.
09:37 And when you open up the bar, you'll get a beautiful,
09:41 and it has like a little pyramid design,
09:43 and it reflects light.
09:45 Let me actually take off the plastic
09:46 so you can see how shiny the chocolate is.
09:49 - First of all, first of all, this is like a clutch.
09:53 I could just like, this does look like a design
09:56 for a beautiful clutch to wear with a ball gown.
09:58 Like, look how beautiful that is.
10:00 - Yes, yes.
10:02 And once again, we go through a lot of work
10:04 to make sure it's shiny, it's beautiful,
10:07 it's smooth, and it tastes amazing.
10:09 - You guys, I cannot ruin this art, but I will.
10:15 I will sacrifice to have taste it for you guys.
10:19 All right, so pretty.
10:22 - Thank you.
10:23 - Yeah, this makes for such a,
10:24 imagine you're throwing a dinner party
10:26 and you wanna have parting gifts.
10:28 Like, this is just beautiful.
10:30 - Absolutely, absolutely.
10:31 Find that this is one of our highest sellers,
10:34 just for a one-off gift.
10:36 What exactly they want, do they like wine?
10:38 I don't know.
10:39 A lot of people go for our dark bars and it's not too dark.
10:42 It's about 55% dark.
10:44 And I find that for a lot of people
10:45 who don't like dark chocolate,
10:47 it's the perfect percentage because it's not bitter at all.
10:51 - You got it, that's what I was just about to say.
10:53 I'm not a dark chocolate girl
10:56 'cause it has that aftertaste I don't normally like,
10:58 but this is delicious.
11:00 And thank you for breaking that down, 55%.
11:03 That was so good.
11:05 And beautiful.
11:07 - Thank you.
11:07 - As I finish my dark chocolate,
11:11 you are a member of the New Voices family,
11:13 which is our partner here.
11:14 Can you talk about what it's been like
11:16 being a part of that community?
11:18 - Absolutely, so first and foremost, I am a fan.
11:21 So I graduated from Spelman and being in New Voices
11:28 feels like I'm back at Spelman
11:29 where I'm in a community of people who look like me.
11:33 There's representation everywhere.
11:35 I feel accepted for who I am.
11:38 And it's just a beautiful space to be in.
11:40 And not only that, I feel like I'm getting so much value
11:44 from just the curriculum of what I'm learning.
11:47 And it meets me at the level that I'm at, right?
11:50 I'm in the stage where I'm ready to grow and scale
11:52 and they're providing the material
11:54 that I need to grow and scale.
11:55 And we have access, I should say, access to experts,
11:59 not just somebody who has studied it
12:02 or has done a little bit,
12:03 but we're getting direct access to the experts
12:06 in whatever industry we're talking about.
12:08 So it's been an amazing, amazing experience.
12:11 I'm very, very grateful to be a part of it.
12:14 - I love that.
12:16 And there's so much camaraderie between New Voices brand.
12:19 So it's a really, really great group to join.
12:22 It's completely free.
12:23 So make sure you guys are going to newvoicesfamily.com
12:28 for more information on how you can join.
12:30 There's so many benefits there to it.
12:32 I'm still like, I'm still basking in a glove on my chocolate
12:38 so, so great.
12:40 So do you, why don't you share with the people
12:42 how they can get in touch with you,
12:43 how they can kind of follow and make sure
12:46 that they are continuing to support and continuing to order?
12:50 - Absolutely.
12:51 So you can do so in two ways.
12:52 The first follow us on, so all social media channels,
12:56 TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, it's @cocoacentive.
12:59 That's C-O-C-O-A-S-A-N-T-E.
13:03 And of course you can shop at our website,
13:05 www.cocoacentive.com.
13:08 Once again, that's C-O-C-O-A-S-A-N-T-E.
13:12 We have so many amazing flavors coming out
13:14 for the holiday season.
13:15 We have beautiful hot cocoa ornament bombs
13:18 and I'm technically not supposed to say this yet,
13:20 but we have a limited amount of Barbie themed
13:24 hot cocoa ornament bombs.
13:25 - You?
13:26 - Yeah.
13:27 - You have Barbie themed hot cocoa ornament bombs.
13:31 So is that an ornament?
13:32 And then it has like chocolate on the inside?
13:35 - Yeah, so think of, so it's chocolate on the outside
13:37 and inside we pipe our specialty marshmallow fluff,
13:40 but it's shaped like an ornament
13:42 and you can actually split it in two.
13:44 And so you get two servings in one
13:46 and it's the most decadent, rich, oh my gosh,
13:49 just rich chocolate hot cocoa.
13:52 I mean, it's my daughter, she's three
13:55 and she wants this like every day,
13:58 but yeah, it's really amazing.
13:59 I'm excited to bring it out for our customers.
14:03 - You definitely have a future customer in that.
14:06 Would you have a, what's the release date for that one?
14:08 So people can look up.
14:10 - The hot cocoa ornament bombs are going to be released
14:13 next Friday.
14:14 So next Friday they will come out
14:17 and I'm super excited for them.
14:18 And then the week after we'll release our Christmas box.
14:22 So it's a large box of 25 bonbons.
14:25 And if you'll believe it, I had a customer one day
14:27 that told me that he ate the whole box by himself.
14:29 Didn't share it with his wife or anything,
14:31 but we'll have that box so that you can share with others
14:34 or enjoy it by yourself if you choose.
14:37 - Sir, you owe your wife another box of chocolate
14:39 if you're watching out there.
14:41 - But I understand.
14:42 - I understand the struggle of not being able to put it down.
14:45 Well, you have been so, so great.
14:48 Thank you so much for sharing Coco Asante with us.
14:51 And I hope to see you in the future.
14:54 Guys, make sure if you're going to her website,
14:56 Dubai, there is an incredible promo code
14:59 that she's hooking us up with,
15:00 essence15, all caps, get 15% off of your order.
15:04 Ella, thank you so much for joining us
15:06 and good luck to Coco Asante.
15:08 - Thank you so much for having me.
15:10 - All right.