Ocho Candy
Resourceful dads come up with crowd-pleasing organic chocolate bars
Certainly, there’s sugar everywhere. You may have a hankering for the traditional, mass-produced Mars bars and bionic sours on every corner, or wish to hold out for a more sophisticated free-trade 70% cacao gourmet morsel with enough antioxidants to be classified as a superfood. What about a little bit of both?
Noticing a void between the extremes of super-processed and highly sophisticated, naturally, were a couple of dads who wanted to let their kids have some candy, but without feeding them the junk that abounded on Halloween and beyond. So begins the typical small-business story of how OCHO Candy came to be—taking matters into their own hands the resourceful fathers began whipping up organic chocolate and candy bars free of additives, preservatives or artificial flavors. Demand grew among their circle of friends, and they realized the real gap they’d filled in the market.
Now, the San Francisco-based outfit sells a selection of organic candy bars to the public in flavors ranging from mocha and dark chocolate with coconut to peanut butter and peanuts and caramel. On top of the thoughtful ingredients the bars aren’t so mega-sized—a nice touch for those watching their calorie intake, purity of the components aside.
When it comes to how they taste, perhaps the clearest testament to the quality and richness of these bars was the argument that ensued at CH HQ when it was discovered that our supply had been devoured within minutes, and not shared with the entire team. We fell for the creamy chocolate and the light candy crisp in the peanut butter, as well as the coconut’s perfectly balanced texture and the smoothness of the mocha flavor.
OCHO sells individual bars ($2) and variety packs of eight ($8.99) and 18 ($36) online, and can be found at Whole Foods in northern California.
