Alter Eco

And she picked up a bottle of water, and she's like, "Oh, this is so expensive.

I can't afford this." And she gets to the checkout, and she picks up an Alter Eco truffle, and the cashier kinda made fun of her for only buying the cheapest things in the store.

And she walked outside, and she opened up that truffle and popped it in her mouth, and she said, "I don't know why she laughed at me about this one 'cause this is probably the best-tasting thing in the store." Yeah, I can't pay for press like that.

Right.

And so it was a sticker shock for a minute, but then, like you said, people still want chocolate, and so it's come back.

There's been a lot of effort from ingredient companies to develop alternatives to chocolate that I wouldn't say they're...

Alter Eco will never use them.

That's not who we are.

All right, well, we're live here with Keith Bearden, the CEO of Alter Eco Foods.

Keith, thanks for joining the Real Ears podcast today.

Thank you for having me.

Um, I mean, I've benefited tremendously from peer advisory groups that I've been in, Real Leaders being one of them, of course.

Um, I've built great relationships, and I've leveraged those relationships in ways that have supported not just me, but the company.

Um, we just switched banks at Alter Eco, and we're now with Climate First Bank, and that's been a wonderful transition.

Um, so, you know, those are things that I think are important.

To-- I- in order to build an advisory board, you have to first understand what your needs are and where you are in your progression as a company.

Pleasure to be here.

So yeah, Alter Eco has been around for a little more than 20 years.

It was founded by a couple of guys, French guys, that actually did some traveling through Latin America and saw kind of the plight of some of the farmers and how...

They really didn't make a lot of money off of their cacao or any of their other products.

And Alter Eco had a number of other products outside of chocolate.

When they first started, they had quinoa and rice and coffee.

Those were products that we didn't have a lot of success in growing the distribution of those.

Yeah, yeah.

but they're really delicious for desserts.

When I'm not buying Pasha, I'm buying Alter Eco.

You can find Alter Eco at Whole Foods and Erewhon.

And Mother's Market, usually it's down on one of the lowest shelves.

My favorite from them is the 100% raw cacao because I'll take a little piece and I'll eat it with a date.

This chef on my team asks the question, you know, what's some real good chocolate? What's clean chocolate? And clean chocolate is what is chocolate made with real cacao with no synthetics added at all? No mystery chocolate.

So I buy Pasha.

I buy Alter Eco.