Meet Karla McNeil Rueda of Cru Chocolate in Roseville

Today we’d like to introduce you to Karla McNeil Rueda.

Karla, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I am an immigrant from Honduras with is one of the birthplaces of chocolate, so cacao-based drinks are a tradition for us. When I moved to the USA I worked in the food industry this brought me to the world of specialty coffee having been raised in a coffee farming family, it was exciting for me to see how people saw coffee in the USA this allowed me to think about chocolate as a craft.

Every Christmas my mom will come and visited me, people from Honduras would always send me cacao or chocolate drink powders like Pinol, and we will get together with friends here in the USA and we would pan roast the cacao and pass around the mortar and pestle and make chocolate and everyone would freak out because they did not knew where chocolate came from and how easy it was to make, so this experiences help me to see chocolate in a different way and we identified a need in showing people the origins of chocolate.

Cru was founded in 2016, starting with used equipment and a lot of curiosity about how chocolate is made. I began under a cottage food license, which allowed me to make chocolate at home while learning and refining the process. Working from home has made it possible to balance raising two children with running a growing chocolate business. It’s not always easy to juggle both, but it allows me to be present for my family while doing something I truly love. We’re all growing together—personally and professionally.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The biggest struggle for us has been real state we currently make the chocolate at our house and we do mobil shows and fairs, with the real state price in California is very hard to grow a business, specially in the food industry where the margins are very small. We have not been able to find a building that we can afford in which we can expand our facility and be able to bring the public in. But this has also open opportunities for us like working with more people who have business where people come to them like breweries and coffee shops, working with them allows us to help them to make better drinks and to introduce chocolate to their customers in a different way.

Since there is still a lot of education to do with the consumers to understand the health, social and economic ramifications of chocolate and how they purchasing affects people across the world, so working with other other industries allows us to have an impact over their customers who would have never even thought about their coffees or beers having chocolate in it.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Cru Chocolate story. Tell us more about the business.
We are dedicated to make delicious chocolate in a nourishing way, in a way that brings peace and prosperity to the people and communities that participate in the process. We roast and grind the cacao and make chocolate bars, we specialized in drinks and in working with beverage companies like coffee shops or breweries, we make chocolate for their mochas or roast cacao for their beers and also make chocolate for chefs.

What sets us apart is that we work directly with farmers in Central America and our cacao sourcing is based in heritage, dignity and respect towards people that respect each other and the Land.

We focus in nourishment and flavor we believe that peace and love come throughout our food and connection with others. We are fed by the energy and happiness of the people growing and cooking our foods, we are nourished by the land that these foods and people come from and this is the medicine for our world. When we have a close relationship with a food and with the people who grow it and cook it we are truly nourished and this is healing, is not about a recipe, or a process or how many ingredients or about antioxidants levels, it is about relationships and connection.

We are proud of our work in Central American in inspiring people to re-claim chocolate as their ancestral right and as a nourishing food. And we help train women in Central America in how to make chocolate in a way that can feed their children and create a source of income for their families.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Luck rules the universe, I now know that they are thousand of women in Honduras, in Central America, millions of women in the world who are more talented than me, who are willing to work harder than me, who know more than me, but today they are in the other side of the border with very few options and opportunities, today they struggle to feed their children and fear for their lives. and I am here peacefully talking to you about one of the most delicious food in this world, a food that many of those women might had grown or cared for, today you get to seat and see the world of others from a distance in which you decide how deep you want to go, If we don’t call this luck then I don’t know know what luck is. I have been lucky, I have been blessed by the Gods, that I can not denied.

Pricing:

• $5 Roasted Cacao Beans
• $10 Chocolate Bars
• $20 Drinking Chocolate Wheels

Contact Info:

• Phone: 9164100121
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @CruChocolate
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cruchocolate

Image Credit:
@rachelle_lerude

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