Mānoa Chocolate is a Hawaiʻi-based chocolate maker that began in the labs at the University of Hawaiʻi in 2010 where the founders' friends were studying cacao as a crop for the state. At this time, the global sourcing and consumption of cacao were beginning to shift in the sense that people were starting to pay attention to where chocolate is grown—not only where it is made.

As more and more cacao farms and research trials were starting to pop up around the state, the founders realized that there was a need for local chocolate manufacturing—someone to buy the cacao beans and/or help farmers turn their crops into chocolate.

Mānoa Chocolate is one of the largest artisan chocolate makers in the U.S. and is still working hard to make better and better chocolate and help grow the craft chocolate industry as a whole.