Our Impact

Sourcing cacao ethically and transparently has been the foundational element of building a chocolate company that can ignite the transformation of flavor experience for our customers, as well as ensure our commitment to a more just world and cocoa industry. We chose a couple of partners to help ensure this reality, including primary partner, Uncommon Cacao.

Our partners at Uncommon Cacao, as well as other sourcing partners, put a heavy emphasis on transparency to combat historic opacity in pricing and farmer inequity. They emphasize fair and transparent farmgate prices, ensuring that farmers are paid a premium for their cacao beans, which enables them to invest in sustainable practices, improve their livelihoods, and support their communities.

This initiative came in our 10th year, something we've long hoped for, and are now very proud to share publicly. We share 10% of net income with our local team, because we believe all stakeholders deserve a reward for their work. It takes a team to create, craft, sell, and distribute chocolate. We believe profit sharing gives our entire team a stake in the company's performance, and truly helps us celebrate people.

All producers that work with Uncommon Cacao use regenerative farming practices by intercropping with other crops. This technique offers several benefits for soil preservation, CO2 sequestration, and biodiversity conservation. In addition to the cacao we source, we also need a lot of sugar to make chocolate! We are proud to source from the first sugar producer to earn the Regenerative Organic certification, Natíve. Natíve’s Green Cane Project has been long recognized as the model for sustainability.

Composting & recycling are core components of our operations. Additionally, sustainable packaging has been one of the main ways we can make an impact on the environment. We utilize compostable plastic sleeves for our chocolate bars and the paper wrappers are recyclable. As we are able, we work to expand those components to all of our packaging. In a multi-year project to be completed in mid-2024, our truffle box exteriors will *finally* be recyclable, bringing us to 80% of all products sold wrapped in recyclable & compostable packaging.

Producing excellence is at the heart of the day-in and day-out of Markham & Fitz operations. This ethos is maintained by every member of our company on every task. Our team members embody excellence and bring that spirit to their craft – whether it’s roasting cacao, molding chocolate bars, dipping & decorating confections, or serving our customers at the counter.

We believe this approach to craft is what drives our industry forward. Excellence starts with the quality of ingredients and thoroughness of care in production. This approach has won us a Good Food Award, an International Chocolate Award, and recognition in numerous magazines and journals including being dubbed “Best Chocolate in America” by Food & Wine Magazine.

Over our 10 years, we are proud to have taken home multiple awards from the Good Food Foundation, International Chocolate Awards, and to be recognized by local business reviews and national publications. All of these are external validation for the excellence we strive to produce day in and day out.

Our Ooh La Lavender won a Good Food Award in 2019; No. 1 Fan took home an International Chocolate Award in 2022; Our Peanut Butter + Strawberries R&D bar was a Good Food Awards finalist in 2023.

We recently won "Best Bite" at local Chef's in the Garden 2024, and have been named "Woman Owned Business of the Year" by the Bentonville Chamber of Commerce in 2020.