Award-Winning Goodnow Farms Chocolate will Open a Boston Public Market Shop

Goodnow Farms dark chocolate bars highlight unique flavors from their sources of origin. / Photos courtesy of Goodnow Farms Chocolate

A decorated chocolate-maker is bringing its clean, simple bars and other products to the Boston Public Market. Goodnow Farms Chocolate, which imports single-origin cocoa beans to its Sudbury farm and production facility, is opening its first-ever retail shop in Boston later this spring. The chocolate-making family is also celebrating a record-breaking specialty food awards season.

The Boston Public Market stall will open June 1, across from Inna’s Kitchen. It will be stocked with the full selection of Goodnow Farms’ single-origin chocolate bars, including three that recently earned Sofi Awards (known as “the Oscars of artisanal foods”); as well as hot cocoas, and specialty bars flavored with ethically or locally sourced ingredients like whiskey, almonds, coffee, and maple.

Goodnow Farms will also offer something totally new at its retail counter: Freshly roasted cocoa nibs. Rogan suggests trying these at home like an herbal-tea infusion, or as a topping for yogurt and granola bowls. Wholesale partners like George Howell Coffee and Trillium Brewing have used these flavorful seeds in their chocolate-infused products, but this is the first time Goodnow Farms has sold it to the public.

“We’ve loved making chocolate at our farm, but we can’t share it with people there. The natural next step is to have a location where people can try everything, and where we can be part of the local community,” says Monica Rogan, who launched Goodnow Farms in Massachusetts with her husband, Tom, three years ago, a decade after starting to make chocolate as a hobby out of their Los Angeles kitchen. It was tasting distinctive, homemade chocolates in California that first got the Rogans interested in making them. Now, they spend a lot of time traveling to Central and South America to visit farms from which they source their beans.

Tom and Monica Rogan at their Sudbury chocolate-making facility, Goodnow Farms. / Photos courtesy of Goodnow Farms Chocolate

Goodnow Farms Chocolate just won six Sofi Awards in total. In five decades of awards, that’s the most medals the Specialty Food Association has ever handed to one brand in a single year. Goodnow Farms swept the dark chocolate category, marking the first time a single maker has won Gold, Silver and Bronze Dark Chocolate awards in the same year.

In the chocolate candy category, Goodnow’s Special Reserve chocolate bar made with Putnam Rye Whiskey earned silver medals for Best Dark Chocolate, and Best New Product; and its Almendra Blanca hot cocoa also earned silver in the hot beverage category. The dark chocolate podium was stacked with single-origins: The gold award-winner is Ucayali, a Peruvian bean with floral and herbal flavor notes; silver is Asochivite, a bright and fruity bean from Guatemala; and Coto Brus, a Costa Rican variety with notes of caramel, plum, and cocoa, earned the bronze.

The industry-expert judges who blindly selected Goodnow Farms’ chocolates from all submissions in the category said with dark chocolate in general, it comes down to nuances in the flavor. “It was apparent these products have a country of origin that is meaningful, and you could taste spiciness, creaminess, earthiness. Many flavors shown through,” said Ken Blanchette, who sources curated products around the world for FreshDirect.

“We’re really proud of how smooth and flavorful our chocolate is,” Rogan says. “This is just showing the quality and dedication we have to this has been realized.”

While its Boston Public Market storefront gets ready to open, Goodnow Farms’ products are for sale at locations all around the country. It also has an online retail shop, and is offering a 20% discount with code “SofiSweep” in honor of the latest awards. Stay tuned for these award-winning chocolates to land their own, dedicated retail counter in Boston.

Goodnow Farms Chocolate, coming spring 2019 to the Boston Public Market, 100 Hanover St., Boston, bostonpublicmarket.org; 80 Goodnow Rd., Sudbury, 978-579-4939, goodnowfarms.com.

Goodnow Farms’ Ucayali, Asochivite, and Coto Brus chocolate bars swept the dark chocolate category in the 2019 Sofi Awards. / Photos courtesy of Goodnow Farms Chocolate

Tom and Monica Rogan of Goodnow Farms. / Photos courtesy of Goodnow Farms Chocolate

UPDATE, 6 p.m.: A previous version of this article misstated that Goodnow Farms Chocolate would sell cocoa-nib teas and yogurt bowls at the BPM; in fact, it will just sell the cocoa nibs for customers to use at home.