A hand holding a single dark chocolate square up to soft window light above a wooden table of cacao samples and handwritten notes

The House

The whole chain, held to one standard.

Twenty-five years, more than twenty origins, and every decision between the cacao and the recipient.

Why the House exists

Chocolate is judged at the end: the bar, the shape, the wrapper, the flavor. Each of those is the result of hundreds of decisions made before it — which cacao and which harvest, how it was fermented and dried, how it was roasted, refined, and conched, what it was formulated with, how it was produced, what it was wrapped in.

The industry divides that chain among specialists. Haus of Cacao holds it whole. Twenty-five years inside every part of it — evaluating cacao at origin, fermentation and post-harvest, manufacturing, formulation, gifting, advisory — across more than twenty origins and projects in the thousands. The result is comparative knowledge: a decision at origin understood in terms of what it allows at the last detail.

Chocolate is the medium. Expertise is the offering.

Principles

What guides the House.

Judgment before execution

Every project begins with understanding. The House earns the right to make by first knowing what must be protected.

The material carries the meaning

Cacao, chocolate, ingredients, and packaging speak for themselves. Selection and care give them their meaning; the object says the rest.

Every decision belongs to the whole

Origin influences formulation. Formulation shapes production. Production determines packaging. The House treats the chain as one thing.

The standard is held to the last detail

Quality is the discipline of carrying intention through every stage. The standard is one, and it applies to the last decision as fully as the first.

Selection runs both ways

Growers, partners, and clients are chosen by one measure, and the House expects to be chosen the same way. Work is accepted on the standard rather than the schedule.

In practice

The next range begins at origin.

The House's next range is made from heirloom Nacional cacao grown in Ecuador. The couverture is made there too — at origin, to the House's specification — and finished into chocolate in Georgia.

Making couverture where the cacao grows is a decision about quality first. The beans move once, from fermentation and drying into a process the House has set from roasting through conching, and the same judgment governs every stage of the transformation. The value of that transformation stays in Ecuador.

One cacao, one specification, one chain.

Kristen Hard and Caline Jarudi reviewing chocolates on a marble worktable

The founders

Haus of Cacao is guided by Kristen Hard and Caline Jarudi, whose combined work reaches across every threshold of chocolate — from cacao at origin to its final expression, from the discipline of making to the building of a brand, from a single private commission to an international market.

Across two decades their work has moved between craft and commerce: sourcing cacao, evaluating it internationally, making the chocolate Food & Wine named Best New American Chocolate, developing products and brands, building wholesale relationships, opening retail stores, and taking the work to markets including Japan. Along the way they have created for private clients and for Porsche, Hermès, Dior, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Mercedes-Benz.

To understand chocolate fully is to understand everything it passes through — origin, hand, imagination, and encounter.

This breadth gives the House its perspective: the ability to see each project whole and to protect its coherence from the first decision to the last detail.

From Cacao Atlanta to Haus of Cacao

The House began in 2006 as Cacao Atlanta: a bean-to-bar factory, retail stores, and a gifting practice built on direct work with cacao. Those years set the discipline the House carries now — material knowledge, operational experience, and one standard held through every detail.