Today we’d like to introduce you to Scott Davis.
Hi Scott, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’d be glad to. Hi everyone, my name is Scott Davis and I am the owner of a small business here in Utah called Native Bean. For those of you who haven’t heard of us, we’re a bean to bar chocolate company based in Springville, UT.
A lot of people have asked me how I got started and why chocolate, well it’s an interesting story actually.
It was in 2019 when it all started. I was working on film sets as a special effects film artist. I would create fire, smoke, and snow for various TV series and films. Just to clarify, these were practical effects done on set not like on the computer with green screens and everything. Okay I just feel I had to say that. I had been involved in filmmaking for about five years up to that point and I really was living my childhood dream. It was a lot of fun.
It was during that year that the team and I had been working for six months back to back and we all decided we would take a month off to recharge. I remember waking up the day after and thought “okay if this were a usual 14 hour day what would I be doing?” I knew there was a lot to do and I couldn’t seem to sit still. I cleaned. I organized. I went to the gym, but there still was so much time left, so I decided to start searching around old book stores in Provo.
I had always loved to read but with so much time on my hands, I just figured I’d read a new book every week. I bought like five or so and read all of them. But, it wasn’t until one day when I woke up thinking “I’m going to try the Eborn books store in the Provo mall,” that I felt there was a special book in there that I just had to read.
I went into the store and I started looking around. I must’ve been in there for a good solid hour. I didn’t see anything that spoke to me. Then as I was going over the section Business and Corporations one last time, I pulled out a brown chocolate colored book and knew right away it was the book I needed to read. It was entitled, The Emperors of Chocolate.
I took it back home and I became enveloped in its pages. I couldn’t put it down. Everything that Milton Hershey accomplished was incredible! I was moved by his passion and discovery. I finished the book. Then right after I reread it. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. I got on the internet and searched for all the words that I had come across, conching, etc. I was up till 3 am that night trying to find any information I could.
I finally decided after a few days that I’d try it myself. I ordered some cocoa beans off of Amazon and roasted them in a skillet. I took off the husk and it was so cool to see the complete cocoa nib for the first time and smell this sort of overdone brownie smell. I then got the mortar and pestle out and tried to grind them into a paste. Nothing happened. I must’ve sat there for four hours desperately trying to get it to work. But to no avail.
I researched more and more and found from a bean to bar blog that I needed more power with something known as a wet stone grinder. I ordered one from an old coffee house in Seattle. They sent it to me and I again repeated the steps. I watched this time as the nibs began to slowly grind like magic into this beautiful chocolate paste that I now know is known as chocolate liquor. I was excited but more than anything I was inspired to keep working at it. Many people told me this was a very expensive experiment. I agreed but I couldn’t stop.
Easter soon came around and I showed my family members my creations letting them try out different variations. Their feedback told me everything. So as my work on film sets started back up once again I began to work on my few days off, experimenting with different recipes, reading more blogs, watching old documentaries of the Hershey factory, and constantly rereading that book. It was my Bible in this industry.
In time my recipes were approved and I moved forward to starting an online website. It was very rudimentary and cheap looking but family and friends started placing orders and I felt just like Hershey when he started selling his caramels door to door. I couldn’t stop and haven’t to this day! It has become a passion of mine. I love being able to try new origins, work on improving the customer experience each year and the overall quality of the chocolate.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Right. One thing anyone who wants to get into the chocolate industry needs to understand is it is all a secret. This was the biggest struggle I had when starting out. Sure, I could order cocoa beans from all over the world but that doesn’t mean I would know what to do with them.
One particular secret of most chocolate makers is their roasting profiles.
They hardly ever give those away, the times and temperatures they use to roast their cocoa beans. So that became a huge challenge to take these high quality cocoa beans and try to get a perfect roast. Many times they tasted burnt, raw, overdone but I kept working at it. After what seemed like weeks of experiments I finally had what seemed to me like great tasting chocolate.
A second struggle I had was tempering. It’s one of the most difficult tasks a chocolatier or chocolate maker has. The room temperature must be correct, the marble or cooling agent must be correct and you have to work very quickly. So I remember mastering this skill on marble but when temperatures outside would reach 100+ it was many many nights of remelting and re-tempering the chocolate.
It was at times very very stressful to keep up with farmer’s markets, events, and online orders. It’s nights like that that you just want to throw in the towel and say I’m done.
We’ve been impressed with Native Bean, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Sure! Native Bean, quite simply put, is a chocolate company that produces high quality single-origin chocolate directly from the cocoa beans of Madagascar, Ecuador, and Belize. One thing that distinguishes our chocolate from others is that we use all-natural cocoa butter. We don’t add fillers or additives like soy lecithin for example.
I think one thing I’m very proud of is how far we’ve come in developing the experience of opening one of our chocolate bars and the overall quality of the packaging. We used to have hand-cut wrappers put together with glue dots. We now have each bar wrapped in royal blue foil and placed in a box-like sleeve with each country being the primary focus on the front.
I think I’d love for everyone to know that we really are passionate about our products but also in the type of cocoa beans we source. We are only interested in purchasing ethically sourced cacao. It’s important because we know in doing so we are supporting farmers with a premium price so they don’t have to resort to child or slave labor. We love being able to be transparent and really truthful about what we produce and where it’s all coming from.
How do you define success?
Success. This is an interesting word to me. I believe success is being able to provide a great product that people truly enjoy again and again.
Going back to Hershey, I love how one of his colleagues said he measured success and it’s something I truly believe, “Milton Hershey measured success not in dollars but in terms of a good product to pass on to the public, and still more in the usefulness of those dollars for the benefit of his fellow man.”
Pricing:
- $9-10 per full-size bar.
- $5 for our minibars.
Contact Info:
- Email: nativebean19@gmail.com
- Website: www.thenativebean.com
- Instagram: @nativebean
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UC9p8bqPN_X5TJvNSJ7xVH-A
Image Credits
@Treat_yourself_photography
