Our Company

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About Us

Makers and Suppliers
of Premium Chocolate

Guittard is the oldest continuously family-owned & operated chocolate company in the US.

Rooted in five generations and over 150 years of chocolate expertise, our company combines American craftsmanship with an unwavering commitment to sustainability, premium quality, and bold flavor innovation.

Vintage illustrated E. Guittard & Co. advertisement depicting the San Francisco storefront surrounded by scenes of chocolate production and factory workers.

A 150-Year Family Tradition of Craft & Innovation

We’ve been making chocolate for five generations, using a combination of a time-tested craft, innovative techniques and a complete obsession with making premium chocolate and cocoa products that allow you to take your products to the next level. Since 1868, we've been crafting the finest chocolate with a goal of highlighting the beauty, diversity and flavor of the cocoa beans that we source and the communities that cultivate them so that we can deliver to you a chocolate that not only tastes and performs well but also contributes positively to the world that grows and consumes it.

Our Timeline

Chocolate cookie dough being portioned with a scoop onto a parchment-lined baking sheet.

What We Offer

We are proud to offer products made with craft, quality and integrity that have been designed for the unique needs of professionals, wholesale customers and homebakers.

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Premium Quality for premium customers.

Offering chocolate and chocolate products to the food manufacturing industry with personalized service, innovative product development resources, food safety and SQF-certified manufacturing practices.

Portrait of two people standing together in a wood-paneled room with framed artwork and large green plants.

Sustainability

As a 5th generation family business, we strive to make everything we touch—the land, the industry, our customers, people, and partners—better than we found it.

Cocoa beans spread out to dry on a wooden surface outdoors.

Quality

We invest in the future of flavor

Hands holding freshly harvested yellow and brown cacao pods.

Sourcing

We craft with integrity

Sunlit cacao grove with cacao pods growing from tree trunks and branches amid dense green tropical foliage and ground vegetation.

Planet

We tread lightly

Culinary professional wearing a red chef coat and disposable gloves pipes cream onto individual desserts at a preparation table, with additional plated pastries and kitchen staff visible in the background.

People

We support the next generation

Overhead view of workers opening cacao pods and collecting fresh cacao beans in a basket.

A commitment that underscores our dedication to sourcing with utmost integrity so that we contribute to a thriving cocoa-growing community for generations to come.

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Our Craft

Person holding an opened yellow cacao pod filled with fresh white cacao pulp, surrounded by lush green plants

Fresh Bean Pod

Cacao beans are grown and harvested year-round, primarily from October through March. Frequent harvesting ensures that each cacao pod reaches optimal ripeness before being picked. Once harvested, the pods are opened so the beans can be removed. The beans are covered in a white pulp. The pulp has various flavor characteristics that change based on the variety of the bean - everything from tart, sweet, bright, floral but overall, extremely complex (and delicious!)

Rows of large wooden fermentation boxes inside an open-air cacao processing facility.

Fermenting Beans

Once removed from their pods, farmers then must ferment the beans. Natural fermentation processes, break down bitter and astringent compounds developing complex flavors and colors. Different origins have different traditions and ferment in various ways; more often than not, you find box fermentation in Latin America whereby heap fermentation is more common in West Africa.

Rows of cacao beans drying on raised wooden tables inside a greenhouse.

Dried Beans

Finally, growers spread the beans out to dry naturally in the sun, sometimes using a rake to design traditional, carefully crafted drying patterns. Sun-drying enhances natural chocolate flavor and avoids pitfalls associated with other methods. Guittard chocolate is made almost exclusively of sun-dried beans.

Two people in white lab coats examining chocolate samples in a food testing laboratory.

Quality Control

You can only make good chocolate from good ingredients. Our Quality Control team receives pre-shipment samples of each of our raw materials, including cacao beans. Every ingredient is tested for flavor and quality to ensure it meets our strict specifications, guaranteeing that our end product consistently meets the desired flavor demands.

Close-up of roasted cacao nibs scattered across a white surface, showing varied brown tones and rough, crunchy textures.

Roasting, Winnowing, and Milling

Cacao beans are roasted in our Burlingame facility. Next, they’re winnowed and then slowly ground into fine particles until they become a dark, bitter liquid (chocolate liquor or cocoa mass).

Close-up view inside chocolate-processing equipment, with small pieces of chocolate and cacao residue moving through a narrow metal channel.

Mixing and Refining

Blending and Refining

Other ingredients, such as sugar, added cocoa butter and milk (in the case of milk chocolate) may be added at this stage. The resulting thick chocolate is taken from the mixer and refined further to an extremely smooth consistency.

Close-up of thick, smooth chocolate being mixed inside industrial chocolate-processing equipment, showing a glossy, creamy texture.

Conching

Conching is the crucial next step in flavor development, where nuances and complexities are created in the chocolate. Guittard has over 150 years of custom chocolate-making and conching experience, and some of our conching formulas have been handed down over five generations.

Close-up of semi-sweet chocolate chips falling onto a large pile of chocolate chips.

Tempering, Depositing and Moulding

Last, the chocolate is tempered to achieve perfect consistency and moulded or deposited into bars, wafers, and chips.

Gloved hands arranging orange-packaged chocolate bars on a conveyor belt during production.

Culture & Careers

We are proud to have multiple generations working at Guittard - from our factory to our sales team. It's a culture of trust, respect, joy, and teamwork.

We are always looking for enthusiastic and dedicated members to join our family.

Download our Job Application - FOR MANUFACTURING JOBS ONLY