In an ever competitive world can small and wholesome businesses actually thrive? HU Kitchen was known as a high quality, paleo-inspired restaurant in New York City, turned vegan chocolate brand, HU Chocolate. The brand boasts using clean and simple ingredients in every bar. Recently the company underwent a major acquisition by monster house corporation Mondelez International. The question begs, can a seemingly healthy brand stay in its integrity? Only time will tell.
Key Takeaways
Spooky Season
Fall season means spooky season and what’s better than indulging in a sweet treat after a meal or in the evening curled up with a good book? When I crave sweets I don’t usually crave any old sweet, I’m usually craving sweet and bitter, rich and creamy chocolate.
There’s an enormous amount of options on the shelves and unfortunately the majority of the chocolate we find in our average grocery store can hardly be considered chocolate at all.
If you’re still indulging in brands like Hershey’s, Nestle, and Mars I highly urge you stop. Not only are these brands associated with the “Big 10” but the majority of those classic Halloween candies are loaded with unhealthy amounts of sugar, unnatural additives, hydrogenated and seed oils.
You don’t deserve that. You deserve real, rich chocolate, made with pesticide free and sustainably sourced cacao. A bar that won’t spike your blood sugar and will only require you to eat a few squares to feel totally satiated.
If you’ve already given up the bad stuff and are on your way to consuming only pure, dark chocolate without any sticky additives make sure you’re opting for at least 70% cacao and bars containing little and natural sugar. If you eat this way you end up consuming all of the yummy benefits cacao has to offer such as antioxidants, calcium and magnesium. It has also been found that healthy amounts of dark chocolate can offer healthy brain function, and improved mood, while promoting heart health.
Today we’re going to talk about the vegan chocolate of vegan chocolates (in my humble opinion), Hu (as in Human) Chocolate.
This months Product Spotlight: Hu Kitchen
Founded in 2012, the Hu brand was created when co-founders and family members Jordan Brown, Jason and Jessica Karp, found themselves deep in the health and wellness world and frustrated with current and available chocolate brands.
What did they decide to do? Well, create their own. They first started their venture by opening Hu Kitchen, a paleo-inspired restaurant in New York City focusing on high quality ingredients and simple recipes. The restaurant stayed open for 8 successful years and shut down during the pandemic in 2020. On the bright side, this shutdown allowed the team to focus solely on their chocolate empire.
The brand boasts their products are crafted with “no weird ingredients, ever”. This is to include no refined sugar, cane sugar, sugar alcohols, erythritol, soy, gluten, palm oil, lecithins, or emulsifiers. Every bar is made with 3 simple ingredients, cacao, unrefined coconut sugar and cocoa butter. In regards to a chocolate bar that is both healthy and delicious this is radically exciting and definitely something to brag about.
The simple chocolatey ingredients act as a base but it doesn’t stop there. Hu has curated a number of “flavors” such as cashew butter and raspberry, hazelnut coffee, crunchy mint, and vanilla crunch. My personal favorite Cashew Butter + Orange Vanilla. It’s the perfect sweet treat if you’re craving that little sugar hit after dinner and a bar with ingredients you can actually feel good about. If you’re craving a vegan treat, made with high quality and minimal ingredients, look no further!
Controversy
While I remain a loyal fan to HU there has been a recent and disappointing shift in their brands direction.
Like many quickly growing brands, the founders of Hu found to their delight and dismay, their brand was expanding on a large scale and at a very fast pace.
The brand began off by selling their products in smaller grocery stores but when they landed in Whole Foods that’s when they really took off. The chocolate is now sold in over 34,000 stores across the US, Canada and the UK as well as online.
They sell their classic vegan dark chocolate, an assortment of baking chocolate and more recently milk chocolate made with grass-fed cow milk.
Maintaining their sole ownership of the company for as long as possible was a major goal for co-owners Jordan, Jason and Jessica.
With the very fast projected growth, one of Hu’s major investors Mondelez brought an offer to the table the owners could not resist. In 2021 Mondelez International acquired Hu Products in its entirety. According to the owners the advantages that Mondelez offered could not have been replicated on their own terms. Simply unable to keep up with demand, the recent acquisition offers Hu many growth opportunities they may have not had access to before, but at what cost?
Mondelez International coined “snacking made right” has now acquired our beloved HU but they are also owners of: Cadbury, Toblerone, Ritz, Oreo, Belvita, and Clif. It begs the question whether any brand, pure as they may be, can successfully make it on their own in this day and age without “selling out”.
I don’t know if I’ll ever purchased a box of Ritz again after reading the ingredients list (WHEAT flour, palm oil, sugar, raising agents, ammonium bicarbonate, monocalcium orthophosphate, sodium bicarbonate, potassium bicarbonate, glucose-fructose syrup, salt, BARLEY malt flour, emulsifier (sunflower lecithin). But what I can say for now, is that HU seems unaffected by the shift, in that their ingredient list remains the same.
Final Thoughts
With a wide range of truly spooky chocolate brands on the shelf, Hu Chocolate is a brand I feel good about consuming. With that being said, I think it’s important to keep an eye out on Hu’s ingredient list to see if a noticeable change takes place.
More often than not when a large corporation buys out a smaller brand they tend to swap out higher quality ingredients for cheaper quality and unethically sourced ingredients.
I am hopeful that the fearful shift will never come but it sometimes feels all too inevitable. Until that day arrives, I’d keep HU on your radar for all your indulgent vegan needs. If the ingredients remain simple, wholesome and high quality, Hu will remain a decadent and healthy treat.
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