We go to great lengths to ensure that our chocolate arrives safely during the warmer months. Due to the heat-sensitive nature of chocolate, we limit transit times, avoid shipping over weekends and ship in insulated boxes to ensure your chocolate arrives safely in the warmer months.

We've worked hard to find an earth-friendly solution to traditional styrofoam and are proud to insulate our retail shipping boxes with Green Cell Plus Foam. Green Cell is a corn-based alternative to traditional styrofoam that is recyclable, biodegradable, and backyard compostable. To dispose of the insulation, cut or tear open the green outer film and add to your #4 PE recyclables. Then, dissolve the foam panels in the sink; it is safe for pipes, septic, and waste treatment facilities. Questions? Check out this quick video and learn more about the many earth-friendly ways to dispose of your Green Cell Foam here.

Shipping is not a profit center for us. In fact, we lose money on it. We have received suggestions in the past to use the United States Postal Service for all of our shipping. The reason we don’t, however, is lack of tracking. We are a small factory with only 15 full-time employees and need to use one shipping company with tracking, and the best option for us is UPS. We wish that the entire shipping situation was different and not so expensive. We offer free shipping for orders that exceed $55 in some cases (check our Shipping page for more details). This way you are able to get a lot more chocolate and spend a lot less on shipping!

Yes—we use nuts in some of our chocolate. This means that all of our chocolate is made on equipment that may have been in contact with nuts. Therefore, our other chocolate products may contain traces of peanuts and/or tree nuts. We are a very small factory and unfortunately, we do not have the ability to have a separate production line for a totally nut-free environment.

Please check specific product pages for details on which products contain nuts and pertinent allergen warnings. You can also check our packaging; the ingredients and allergen warnings are listed on the nutrition panel, on the back or bottom of the product.

Our dark chocolate is made from two ingredients: cocoa beans and certified organic sugar. Our cocoa butter, which we uniquely press in-house, is made from the same cocoa beans that we use to make our chocolate. Our chocolate is unofficially organic. We go to great lengths to make sure the farmers do not use chemicals and pesticides; not only do they sign a contract, but we also visit these farms yearly and can personally verify their practices. We also make sure that our beans are shade grown and that the cocoa trees are intercropped with other trees and crops. Our cocoa beans are not certified, however, in part for the same reason we aren’t Fair Trade certified—the certification process for the beans is very expensive and our farmers can’t afford it. Though we are not certified organic, our beans can be traced completely back to their origin. We have the name of every farmer who contributed to each crop. On our packaging and our website, we state the bean origin, the bean variety, the percentage of cocoa content, the process (bean to bar), and on most of our chocolate bars, the name, and story of the farmers from whom we sourced the cocoa beans for the bar inside. For specific product information regarding ingredients and nutrition information, visit that product's landing page. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact us.

Everything we make is gluten-free except for our Chocolate Covered S'more Bites, Dark Chocolate + Malted Milk CollaBARation™ Bar and Chocolate Covered Malt Balls. Our signature dark chocolates contain only two ingredients: cocoa beans and organic sugar. We don’t use lecithin, vanilla, or any other additives. 

The majority of our products are Kosher Certified. The certification varies by product, but details on each product’s specific Kosher certification can be found on the product pages. Our certifying partner is Vaad HaKashruth in Kansas City, MO.

All nutritional, allergen, and ingredient information can be found under the specific page for each & every product we make. Note that each product is processed in a facility that also processes milk, goat's milk, peanuts, tree nuts and wheat. You can find Allergen/Special Dietary Information for all of our products, here. Don't hesitate to contact us at info@askinosie.com with any questions or concerns you may have.

We do indeed! Enter our 100% Dark Chocolate Bar, made with zero sugar and just two ingredients (one really, since the cocoa butter is pressed from the same cocoa beans!): cocoa beans and cocoa butter, that's it! We make the cocoa butter ourselves and we are the first small batch chocolate maker in the US to do this. We'd also suggest our Roasted Cocoa Nibs, the purest form (what chocolate is made from!) you can get!

The big deal is—we are the first small batch chocolate maker in the U.S. to press our own cocoa butter AND the first makers of natural cocoa powder. Our Natural Cocoa Powder is made right in our factory using the same beans we use to make our dark chocolate. We have a custom press in our factory that we use to make the cocoa press cake from cocoa liquor that we create with beans from our various origins. The press cake is then milled into a powder that is easy to bake with, make hot cocoa or ice cream and so many other things. It is an authentic single origin powder that is unsweetened and non-alkalized. The true flavor of the beans translates into a rich dark cocoa powder great for baking.

Our cocoa butter is also pressed in our factory using the same custom press as the natural cocoa powder and we are the only small-batch chocolate maker to do this. The Wine Spectator featured our cocoa butter-making in their July 2013 issue “Like Butter for Chocolate,” in which we are praised for being one of the few makers in the world who press our own cocoa butter.

Feel free to log-on to your Askinosie Chocolate customer account to make any changes to your scheduled subscription at any point. Questions? Don't hesitate to reach out to us at info@askinosie.com.

We love the Fair Trade idea. We believe, however, that we have to be vigilant that Fair Trade does not become a marketing gimmick or reduced to a bumper sticker. The Fair Trade movement has been important environmentally, socially, and economically. In many ways, though it has become ubiquitous. We must ask the questions and dig deeper to find out how companies treat people: their suppliers, their employees, their community, etc. Fair Trade has been scrutinized because some question if the money ever finds its way to the farmer in the field and not coop bureaucrats. Our chocolate is not “certified” Fair Trade mainly because the farmers we work with cannot afford the certification but also because we don’t think it’s necessary. We’d like to think that our chocolate is beyond Fair Trade because it’s Direct Trade. Not only do we pay above Fair Trade prices for the beans we buy, we profit share with our farmer partners. Learn more about our work with farmers, profit sharing, and Direct Trade practices here.

At Askinosie Chocolate, we greatly value the opportunity to give to our local community and to share in our successes as we grow as a business. For our company, this is demonstrated through our commitment to two Springfield organizations that are especially important to us: Chocolate University and Lost & Found Grief Center.

Chocolate University was established by Askinosie Chocolate to provide a unique learning opportunity for the students who attend Boyd Elementary, Pipkin Middle, and Springfield area High Schools. This cooperative learning program offers students a chance to learn through the lens of artisan chocolate making and directly connects them with the regions from which we source cocoa beans. Learn more about Chocolate University.

Lost & Found Grief Center was co-founded by our founder, Shawn Askinosie, to provide grief support and education to individuals and families in the Southwest Missouri area at no cost.

Finally, although it’s not a charity, we’re sustainably feeding many students every day in Tanzania and the Philippines through our A Product of Change™ program.

In the past, we have made the effort to meet each of the donation requests we have received in the Springfield area and beyond. Recently we have decided to laser focus our giving efforts to the organizations and projects mentioned above in order to serve with even greater depth. We do make exceptions to this policy for projects that relate directly to our neighborhood.

Shawn here: It’s my last name; so it came from my parents. It was originally “Ashkenazi” but my grandfather had it changed for him to Askinosie when he came to the U.S.A. It is pronounced ask-i-no-see.

Shawn is often traveling to origin and rarely has time to accept speaking requests. However, he is a sought-after speaker and tries to make time to tell our story. He does charge a speaking fee in most instances, as this is a way we raise money for Chocolate University. If you’re interested in learning more details email us at info@askinosie.com. It is possible that another member of our leadership team could speak to your group if the event is local. We’re such a small company that it’s “all hands on deck” most of the time.

These strings come from the bags of cocoa beans delivered to our factory. They are biodegradable, but we reuse them. 

Shawn here: “1-2-3” is something that my wife and I have been writing in cards and notes to each other for nearly 30 years. Nobody but us knows what it means and this was my little tribute to her on the package. Our daughter says that we need to put the meaning in our will or safe deposit box so they can know what it means someday. As for “toot-toot,” when my daughter, Lawren, was little and we tucked her in at night, we would leave her room and say “night night” and she responded “toot-toot” for some inexplicable reason. This phrase has carried on with us now for years. Putting “toot-toot” on the package was my way of remembering her in those days long ago.

In a word: yes. He attended Sophia University in Tokyo and his roommates at Wakei-juku dorm convinced him it was a good idea. His name was “Shooting Shawn Springfield.” Even though he is not a large man, Shawn was big in Japan.