Social Enterprise Auro Chocolate’s Recipe For Resilient Growth

Auro Chocolate needs to address challenges such as environmental impact, price volatility, and long-term sustainability to achieve its ambition of becoming an iconic Filipino brand.

Auro Chocolate, an 11-year-old Philippine social enterprise that sells premium chocolate, wants to have their products enjoyed by every Filipino.

“Our goal is to be an iconic Filipino chocolate brand in the Philippines that would reach every household in some way, [and] to be in people's everyday lives,” said Kelly Go, its co-founder and co-managing director.

She and her fellow founder and managing director Mark Ocampo know that through the brand’s expansion success, they can help the Filipino farming communities who grow the specialty cacao beans they export and use to produce their chocolate.

The company must navigate challenges, however - such as the impact of climate change on chocolate production, the volatility of commodity prices, and the balance of business practicality and long-term sustainability - to realize this ambition.

The Business Manual spoke with Go to learn more about Auro Chocolate’s resilience amidst an unstable market and its plans for scaling up “the right way."

Choosing to Maintain Competitive Pricing

An obstacle in their path towards growth is finding consistency in delivering high-quality products during unstable times in their industry, Go said.

Climate change comes top of mind as a destabilizing factor to the chocolate market.

Rising temperatures lead to lower cacao yields, according to a February 2025 research conducted by universities in Brazil, China, Germany, and the United Kingdom. These poor harvests result in fewer supplies of cacao, driving up the market price of the crop and of products like chocolate.

The rise in cacao and chocolate prices benefit neither buyers nor sellers. Fewer people buy chocolate when the cost of chocolate increases, which narrows producers' and manufacturers' profits.

Auro Chocolate, a purchaser and exporter of cacao beans, has had to adapt to market price surges.

“Starting in 2022, 2023 onwards, the price has been extremely volatile, driven by climate change and a lot of other global issues, causing huge fluctuations in the prices. In a very short period of time, I'd say 12 to 18 months, the price of cacao had tripled, quadrupled,” Go said.

This price surge impacted how the social enterprise interacted with the Davao local communities they partner with to grow Filipino cacao.

Auro Chocolate commits to organic certification, a practice where the company pays farmers a premium above market rates for certified organic cacao.

It's what enables the company to incentivize farmers to produce organic cacao that it can export abroad. 

Because the base price has come up, however, the value of the premium has shrunk, losing its power as an incentive.

“That's what's been really tricky. How do we maintain [the program]? Those programs are not something you can just stop because it doesn't make business sense right now," Go told The Business Manual. "We've put in a lot of effort, like five-plus years, to get that certification going."