Moku Chocolate Is on the Fast Track | The Chocolate Professor

With one year of making chocolate under her belt and within a month of launching Moku Chocolate, Maureen Nikaido won medals for her Goat Milk Chocolate bar at 2020-2021 and 2023 chocolate competitions. Maureen calls it a “fluke”. She only became aware of awards after visiting a local market and noticing that many of the bars on display had won medals. She decided she should enter. The rest is history.

Talent from the Start

I remember the first time I tasted a bar of Moku Chocolate because it unexpectedly blew me away with its complex flavors and smooth, creamy texture. After over a decade of tasting craft chocolate I had come to expect that new chocolate makers didn’t have enough experience to make fantastic chocolate. Once in a while a new maker would present me with a chocolate that was decent, but the majority of time it was apparent they were still cutting their teeth and had room for improvement. Maureen proved me wrong. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that she was the exception to the rule. From the outset her chocolate was fantastic. I had to ask more than once how long she’d been making chocolate.

Moku Origins

Maureen’s is a story passion, one that started in 2006 when she sponsored a girl in Nicaragua, providing mentorship and educational resources to help break the cycle of poverty. After years of providing support, Maureen visited the young woman in Nicaragua and saw the crushing realities of poverty. Her trip left her wondering what she could do to make a difference. She had never considered where chocolate came from or thought about the economic inequalities of cacao farming and production. At that time, she didn’t realize that anyone could make chocolate, so it didn’t occur to her to become a chocolate maker. Over the next few years, she continued to think about what she could do to help and began researching chocolate and cacao. She stumbled upon the craft chocolate movement and realized there are “regular people” like her making chocolate and that they have common goals - highlighting the stories of cacao farmers, finding great beans and paying a fair price.

Maureen Nikaido for Moku Chocolate at Oregon State University Food Innovation Center by L Adler

An Accelerated Launch

This is where Maureen’s story picks up speed. She first began experimenting with chocolate making in January 2020 and by October 2020 felt her chocolate was good enough to enter a competition. She launched her online business in February 2021, found out she’d won in March 2021 and had her products accepted to local grocery chain, Market of Choice, that same month.

Maureen has the pandemic to thank for her fast trajectory. In February 2020 she traveled to Belize on a Dandelion Chocolate origin trip and came home to the pandemic lockdown. It prompted her to take an online class through Portland Community College called, “Getting Your Product to Market”, which focused on food science, safety, marketing, recipe development and scaling.

It will come as no surprise that Maureen’s first dark bar was a Nicaragua-origin bar. She quickly added more origins to her repertoire, including Dominican Republic, Madagascar, Ecuador and Peru. She created a Camino Verde (Ecuador) 60% Dark Milk Chocolate bar to go along with her award-winning Sierra Nevada (Colombia) 60% Goat Dark Milk Chocolate bar.

Expanding the Product Line

Moku Ecuador, Goat Milk and Cherry Chai Spice bars

Inclusions were not far behind. Focusing on using the finest ingredients, grown locally when possible, Maureen put her powers of perfection to use to create a divine Orange Zest 70% dark chocolate bar made with Madagascar cacao. What sets her bar apart from others is its flavor and texture. After candying the orange zest she cuts it into tiny pieces and dries it, creating a crunchy burst of citrus that marries beautifully with the red notes of the Madagascar chocolate. Rounding out her selection of bars is a delicious Hazelnut Camino Verde (Ecuador) 60% Dark Milk Chocolate bar made with local hazelnuts that she roasts and grinds herself.

Looking Ahead

Maureen is in her third year of business and is thinking about the future. Her business is at a point where she needs to decide what direction to take as she looks at avenues for growth and decides which ones are the best options for Moku. Maureen enjoys the relationships she’s built with local retailers in her Oregon community where she can walk into a store with a prototype for the buyer to taste. She loves being able to watch their reaction in person and get their feedback as she hones her product development process. It’s the relationships and local community that give her energy. “There are things you figure out with time. I wanted to stay small, but then I had successes and followed them to see where they went. Now I’m coming back to the parts that give me joy and trying to stay true to what got me interested in chocolate in the first place,” she said.

Whatever path she takes, delicious chocolate will follow.