Culture | Legado Cacao
03/20/2024
Legado Cacao: Building A Legacy Around Cocoa & Community
ES/EN
When longing for a taste of sweetness, cocoa lovers from across the Colombian region venture to Legado Cacao, where the love of community and cacao creates a beautiful harmony. With an inviting atmosphere, delicious sweets, and a team full of wonderful individuals, the Usaquén-based shop invites you to enter the magical world of cocoa and experience all the wonders it has to offer.
Created in 2019 by Carlos Torres, Legado Cacao has been dedicated to providing one-of-a-kind experiences for cocoa enthusiasts around Bogotá and beyond. Sitting in the bustling Usaquén neighborhood, the store is focused on more than just producing top-of-the-line cacao products. Instead for Legado and its manager Ana Maria Rojas – it’s about more than Cocoa, it’s the community and experiences built around it.
“Legado is a cacao experience center,” Rojas said, “a brand that we want to leave as Bogotans and Colombians to our community in Colombia.”
Those visiting Legado have the opportunity to buy quality cacao products and indulge in unique cacao experiences, from creating their own signature chocolate bars to witnessing the magical journey of the cacao bean. For Rojas and her Legado team, providing these experiences is a crucial step in their goal of supplying their consumers with education on cacao and its rich history. Through tastings with chocolate experts at Legado, guests can explore the variety of delicious products created from cacao and discover more about its history and how it’s become such a staple in Colombia.
It’s imperative to Legado that their guests know more about the interesting facets and details of the cacao’s history including its importance to the country. Each visit to Legado is opening the door to understanding even more about the influence cacao has had on Bogotá and the rest of Colombia, especially the diverse communities within it. For Legado, it’s not only about the product, but also about the Colombian communities that have put their blood, sweat, and tears into creating it.
While creating decadent chocolate is a crucial pillar in Legado’s identity, Rojas wants Legado to be known for more. With a mission of becoming an experience center for both residents and visitors, Rojas is guided by the vision to continue to build Legado into something that encompasses more than just a Cocoa shop. Where commercial chocolate bars are focused on selling their products and reaching a mass number of customers, Legado is dedicated to giving its consumers an insight into cacao and its transformation from a bean to a chocolate bar.
Once you enter Legado, you’re stepping into another universe where the smell of Cocoa permeates the air and you can taste the raw bitterness of the cacao bean on your tongue. Whether you’re enjoying a toasty hot chocolate on a chilly day, witnessing the enlightening creation of the chocolate bar, or sharing an experience with loved ones, the power of chocolate can be seen with every Legado visit. Sit outside and feel the warm embrace of the community as you relish in the soft rhythms of local music and delight yourself in Legado’s chocolate creations. No matter if it’s your first visit or you’re hundredth, Legado is dedicated to providing more than just a product. Instead, it aims to give you an authentic Colombian experience through its mouth-watering chocolate right in its hometown of Usaquén.
“We want Legado to be more than a place to eat snacks,” Rojas said. “We want it to be the complete experience that people know from the bean to have your own chocolate bar. We don’t want a commercial chocolate bar, but a very good quality chocolate bar.”
With a focus on sustainability, Legado acquires all of its cacao from farmers around the Bogotá region. Dedicated to using small cacao farmers, the company can ensure that their harvesting is done sustainably and ultimately create a high-quality product for their community to enjoy.
“Legado is the final product of the history of communities”
“We acquire the cacao from regional producers,” Rojas said. “We look for them to be small cacao growers and pay them fairly without intermediaries and others so that they know that they have quality cacao.”
Offering a variety of cocoa products from delectable chocolate boxes to the shop’s best-seller cacao beer, Legado is a local business dedicated to the legacy of cocoa, chocolate, and community. With 5 years of experience, Legado Cacao is providing unique cacao experiences to customers from around the world, and can’t wait to meet all those who will visit their Usaquén store-front in 2024.
“We are a cacao experience and everyone is welcome here to Legado to live a different experience where it is to cover all the senses of cacao and cover the whole history that is behind it,” Rojas said. “And then have the possibility of knowing our awards and trophies that you say a chocolate that really is worth it would be here in Legado in Usaquén. We look forward to seeing you.”
