Buy a $13 chocolate bar, and a tree gets planted in rain forest

Talk about setting the chocolate bar high: $13 for 3.5 ounces.
But a new super-premium San Francisco chocolate-maker, Original Beans Inc., wants you to know you're buying more than just a piece of chocolate. For each purchase, the company -- whose slogan is "The Planet: Replant It" -- will plant a tree in the rain forest where the bar's ingredients originated.
Using a lot number on a certificate printed on the inside of the wrapper, consumers also can trace, using the company's Web site at originalbeans.com, where the cacao beans in their individual bar were grown. Original Beans has contracts with farmers in Bolivia, Ecuador and the Congo.
All that choco-eco-social commitment and sustainability is all well and good for the planet, but will people in these tough economic times be willing to shell out double digits for a bar of chocolate? Even a righteous one?
Original Beans co-founder Lesal Ruskey hopes so.
"People are very judicious about spending their dollars," said Ruskey, who oversees production of the chocolate in Switzerland and works with two partners in Amsterdam, Netherlands. "We also believe if consumers are going to invest their precious dollars in an affordable luxury that they're investing in more than fleeting pleasure."
At the same time consumers are being tightfisted with their cash, they aren't giving up their chocolate. High-quality chocolate, along with other simple pleasures like lipstick or a nice glass of wine, have proven to be recession-resistant, if not recession-proof.
"Premium chocolate will continue to be strong in this economy. It sounds expensive, but compared to a diamond or a car or a pair of jeans or anything else you decide to be frivolous about, it's not that expensive," said Marcia Mogelonsky, senior analyst who specializes in food at Mintel International Group Ltd., a market-research firm with offices in Chicago.
The San Francisco Bay Area is home to a large number of premium chocolate-makers -- including Joseph Schmidt and Scharffen Berger, which are facing local plant closures recently announced by owner Hershey Co.
Sales of premium chocolate -- a category that generally starts at 50 cents an ounce -- are difficult to track because of the large number of micro-manufacturers and the fact that most are privately held and their products are often sold through small retailers.
Total U.S. chocolate sales hit $17 billion in 2008, according to a Mintel study that used data from the National Confectioners Association, the federal government's consumer-expenditure survey and other research groups. That was a 4.2 percent increase from 2007 sales of $16.3 billion.
Mogelonsky couldn't predict whether Original Beans would be successful, but she appreciates that the company gives people the opportunity to contribute to such issues as the ecology and fair trade for the relatively small financial commitment of a piece of chocolate.
Original Beans' chocolate became available last week in just two stores in San Francisco: Fog City News in the Financial District and Noe Valley's Chocolate Covered. The product also is hitting a few select stores in Chicago, Los Angeles and Santa Fe, N.M.
For Chocolate Covered owner Jack Epstein, Original Beans' chocolate -- which he sells for $16 a bar -- isn't the most expensive bar in his store.
Epstein, who offers premium chocolates from some 350 makers, said he tops out at $22 a bar from French chocolatier Bonnat. Incidentally, he said, the Bonnat bars sold out recently.
As for Original Beans, Epstein is impressed more by the taste of the high-quality chocolates, which contain 42 percent to 70 percent cacao depending on the product, than by its sustainable pedigree.
"I liked it very much. I have no problem telling people if you like it and think it's worth it, pay $16. If you don't, que sera," Epstein said. "Everyone decides that for themselves, whether it's a pair of earrings or a pair boots or a martini. You can go out and pay $10, $12 for a martini. If you have any discretionary income, it's your choice."

Chocolate numbers:

-- Annual worldwide cocoa production: 3 million tons.
-- Annual increase in demand for cocoa: 3 percent per year, for the past 100 years.
-- Current global market value of annual cocoa crop: $5.1 billion.

Source: World Cocoa Foundation.

(E-mail Victoria Colliver at vcolliver(at)sfchronicle.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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