Company thinks green with its chocolate

San Francisco Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO — Talk about setting the chocolate bar high: $13 for 3.5 ounces.

But a new super-premium San Francisco chocolate maker, Original Beans Inc., wants you to know you’re buying more than just a piece of chocolate. For each purchase, the company — whose slogan is “The Planet: Replant It” — will plant a tree in the rain forest where the bar’s ingredients originated.

Using a lot number on a certificate printed on the inside of the wrapper, consumers also can trace, using the company’s Web site at originalbeans.com, where the cacao beans in their individual bar were grown. Original Beans has contracts with farmers in Bolivia, Ecuador and the Congo.

All that choco-eco-social commitment and sustainability is all well and good for the planet, but will people in these tough economic times be willing to shell out double digits for a bar of chocolate? Even a righteous one?