Chocolates for the culinarily curious.

our mission

The spirit of adventure and curiosity drives us. We use the highest quality chocolate to explore other whole, high quality ingredients, cuisines, cultures, places, and history. We're not just making chocolates — we're crafting experiences from real food. We don’t over-sweeten our creations or pack them full of refined sugars. 

We search out unique ingredients and unlock their fullest capacity for flavor, texture, and aroma. But that’s all a given. That’s simply where we start our culinary process. 

 M. Cacao is what happens when a French master pastry chef and chocolatier teams up with an engineer from Texas who traded his profession (robots) for his passions of food and chocolate. It’s an approach that sees the epicurean classics as building blocks for culinary exploration and innovation. It’s what happens when we charge chocolatiers and chefs with exploring ingredients, their histories, and their possibilities. And it’s what happens when we treat chocolate as a sacred food passed down to us from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, not as a flavoring for candy. Not that there’s anything wrong with well-crafted candy…but that isn’t what we’re doing at M. Cacao. We’re making chocolates for people who truly love food, and we take that distinction pretty seriously. 

 We’re curious and innovative by nature. The culture of constant inspiration and creative application of flavors and techniques come from the dynamic that Michael and Chef Delphin have created. It is in that spirit that we present to you the culmination of a lifetime of passion and experience in chocolate and food: the M. Cacao Chocolate Collections.

our history

Founder and Chocolatier Michael Nichols has always loved food. After leaving his engineering career, he craved a new challenge. During a vacation in Peru, he found one. He heard the siren song of chocolate. He knew he wanted to apply his modern engineering sensibilities to making chocolate, treating the ingredient as a gourmet whole food. He was tired of the over-sugared, over-processed chocolates on the market. He wanted to raise the bar. 

 When he returned from Peru, Michael enrolled in culinary school and it was there that he met Chef Delphin Gomes. Chef Delphin grew up in the Burgundy region of France and has been working in the pastry arts since he was 14 years old. Michael knew immediately upon meeting Chef Delphin that he had found his culinary partner, and M. Cacao chocolates was founded soon after.  

meet the expedition team