Every year, Americans buy nearly 58 million pounds of chocolate for Valentine’s Day. As such, chocolate is an industry with an astronomically high price tag. These Valentine’s sales alone amount to billions of dollars in sales.
However, it is an industry built upon the backs of exploited workers, making for a less-than-ideal scenario. Nearly two-thirds of the world’s cocoa beans are grown in West Africa, where beans are often harvested by children or grossly underpaid adults. To help assuage these issues, some entrepreneurs have begun to look for viable chocolate alternatives. As a result, lab-grown chocolate has become a bold new frontier of innovation.
The Role of California Cultured
A handful of food tech companies have endorsed lab-grown chocolate. California Cultured, headquartered in Sacramento and founded by Alan Perlstein, is one such company. The company is exploring the possibilities of lab-grown chocolate.
Perlstein started working on cell culture, aka lab-grown meat, over 15 years ago. Since then, he’s worked in cell-based food labs and recently questioned whether he could produce real chocolate at a decent price.
Steve Sterns, a former chef who worked at the famed Noma restaurant in Copenhagen, is one of the company’s leading innovators. After years spent in the kitchen, he transitioned to food science. Steve was drawn to California Cultured because of the company’s emphasis on sustainability and the opportunity to use science to pursue flavor.
He also finds chocolate an incredibly complex flavor and palette to attempt to replicate successfully, further endearing him to the project.
As Steven says, “Thousands of different molecules play into the final flavor profile of a chocolate.”
The smallest adjustments can unlock a new layer of flavor in chocolate. One degree of temperature difference can mark a dramatic flavor shift, and the teams at California Cultured are striving to explore these complexities.
The Differences of Lab-Grown Chocolate
Like traditional chocolate, lab chocolate starts with a cacao pod.
Steven says, “We might have some rare varieties that are hard to grow on the farm, but they can be easier to grow in biomanufacturing. You can think of your criollos for cocoa, which are really difficult to grow.”
Criollo cacao is one of the world’s most prized and rare varieties. The Mayans and Aztecs cultivated it. After choosing a healthy pod with a good flavor profile, technicians cut the pods in half, revealing the cacao beans. Then, they extract cell material from the beans. Since they are inventing this technology, some of their equipment is improvised. The cells, for instance, are stored in a repurposed pizza dough fridge.
Steven says, “It’s basically used to proof dough, if you’re making sourdough or something. It was kind of perfect to store our cells, because plant cells love this specific temperature and humidity that goes on in here.”
When they’re ready to start the culture, technicians cut off a small clump of cells and mix in a nutrient broth, water, sugar, and plant hormones. The liquid is swirled around for a few days, and it’s time to ferment.
The Struggles of Chocolate
Steven says, “There’s a growing gap in the supply and demand in the cocoa industry right now, where the amount of chocolate that is available on the planet is not enough to supply the masses with chocolate.” To this end, “Chocolate grown in California seems like a fairytale,” Steven adds.
But hopefully, all of that will change soon.
After several low-yield years, cocoa prices have soared. From January 2024 to January 2025, the cost per metric ton nearly tripled. If California Cultured can produce enough chocolate at the right price, it will be in business, but it can’t make enough. So, it has opted for smaller-scale options.
As CEO Alan Perlstein details, “The idea is we could first establish trust with consumers, showcasing our ingredients, then working on scaling up this technology, bringing prices down low enough that we could eventually start producing at enough volumes to supply a large user of chocolate, like for M&Ms or Snickers or something else.”
California Cultured is collaborating with Japanese Meiji Chocolates, which is known for making cookie chocolate snacks like Hello Panda and Meiji Mushroom. The company’s first products will launch towards the end of 2025 or early 2026. Alan and Steven are confident they can grow their company into a chocolate giant.
