Note: The headline has been corrected to reflect the business is in Cedar Park.
Carlos Galarza is like the Ecuadorian Willy Wonka. On any given day, customers can walk into Ecuadorian Chocolate Factory on North Bell Boulevard to find him grinding and refining cocoa beans in his stainless steel machines or drizzling hot, liquefied chocolate into bonbon molds. He urges customers to try samples and explains his chocolate-making process with enthusiasm.
He even grows his own cocoa beans. Galarza and his wife, Isabel Rizzo, own a plantation in Ecuador, where they cultivate cacao trees on 200 acres of land. Workers harvest cocoa beans that are shipped to Cedar Park so Galarza can use them in a number of treats, such as chocolate bars and fruit-filled bonbons.
“The idea is to use the least amount of ingredients,” Galarza said in Spanish. “It is a very responsible job, from the plantation to delivering the products.”Galarza also aims to be organic. As of two years ago, the plantation’s workers no longer use pesticides on their products, said Stefanie Palomino, who does marketing for the store.“His goal is to be organic, and not just for the certification so that we can have organic chocolate, but also [to offer] something that is a lot safer and more sanitary and good for us to eat,” Palomino said.
