Ora Cacao makes single-origin, sugar-free cacao by hand. Running two US fulfillment locations was already a lot to manage, and international orders piled on customs paperwork, lost packages, and customers hit with duty charges after checkout. FlavorCloud's compliance intelligence pre-completed the customs forms and its guaranteed DDP locked in costs upfront, allowing Ora Cacao to scale reliably to over 30 countries.
Ora Cacao makes single-origin, sugar-free cacao by hand, produced fully in-house from raw cacao beans.
Running two US fulfillment locations was already a lot to manage.
As international demand grew, Ora Cacao's small team was already stretched thin, managing two US fulfillment locations. International orders piled complexity on top of that: customers were getting hit with duty charges after checkout, customs paperwork had to be filled out by hand as volume increased, and packages were getting lost internationally or stuck in customs with no visibility into why.
Every shipment now clears customs for the first time.
FlavorCloud's compliance intelligence pre-completed the customs forms that used to eat up the team's time by hand, one shipment at a time, as volume climbed past what a manual process could keep up with. Guaranteed Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) shipping locked in the full cost upfront, so customers stopped getting billed after the fact and Ora Cacao stopped fielding complaints it had no way to prevent.
The carrier side improved just as much. FlavorCloud negotiated better rates across its network than Ora Cacao could get on its own and gave the brand access to FedEx Express for faster, more reliable delivery. Packages that used to go missing or sit stuck at customs, with no visibility into why, started arriving on time and in full. For a small team already stretched across two US fulfillment locations, that meant international orders stopped being a source of unpredictable extra work and started running on the same rhythm as everything else.
Scaling reliably to over 30 countries, with the operational chaos gone.
Ora Cacao now ships reliably to more than 30 countries, a scale that would have been unmanageable under its original hand-processed system, where every customs form was filled out by hand and every lost package meant tracking down what went wrong with no real visibility into the problem. What used to be a source of constant firefighting for a small team is now routine. Orders that once required individual attention now move through the same reliable process regardless of destination, whether that's a first-time customer in a new market, or a returning buyer Ora Cacao has shipped to for years.
"Start with a market to gain experience, and then incrementally scale, FlavorCloud is a great solution for this," said founder Jonas Ketterle, describing the approach that actually worked for Ora Cacao: let each new market prove itself before expanding further, with FlavorCloud handling the customs, duties, and carrier complexity underneath.
Ora Cacao keeps its focus on chocolate, not logistics.
With cross-border shipping handled, Ora Cacao continues to expand its reach while staying focused on what the business was actually built for: producing chocolate through a carefully controlled fermentation and roasting process that turns raw cacao into an award-caliber product. The 5–7-day wild fermentation that happens within 24 hours of harvest, the step that separates award-winning cacao from beans that never reach export quality, is where Ora Cacao's attention belongs. International shipping isn't a daily concern anymore. It's infrastructure the team no longer has to think about, which is exactly the point.
Read the full conversation with Ora Cacao founder Jonas Ketterle below.
Interview with Jonas Ketterle, Founder & CEO of Ora Cacao
To start with, please tell us a little bit about your company.
Ora Cacao was started in 2014, and we’ve found our niche as a producer of 100% cacaos, produced fully in house from whole raw cacao beans that we import. As a manufacturer with a direct to consumer brand, we offer our customers unparalleled access to the process of making chocolate. At the moment, we’re primarily growing as an e-commerce brand, and we’re gradually expanding to work with more retailers.
Who is your core audience(s) and what marketing messages resonate with them?
Our core audience is chocolate lovers who want a more significant and sacred connection to chocolate. The industrial chocolate model that most of us grew up with exploits people and the environment, so we’re offering something different that has impact far beyond fair trade. And by offering products without sugar, our customers can enjoy cacao guilt free!
How do you look at global e-commerce and your international business growth?
Eventually we may have fulfillment centers in different global regions, especially Europe and Canada. However, we just began working with two US fulfillment locations, and that’s been a lot to manage. So, our current solution is to use FlavorCloud for shipping internationally, we’ve delivered to over 30 countries this way.
Do you see any differences between your domestic and international customers (product preferences, communications, price sensitivity, etc.), and if so, how do you manage the different audiences?
There is little difference in product preferences. We do have to send review requests, etc. to our international customers later than our domestic audiences, so they don’t receive the requests before the delivery of the product. Making the first sale is the hardest part, because of the additional shipping cost. However once people experience our product, they buy in bulk to reduce shipping cost per pound and come back often.
How are you going about your global expansion?
Currently our international growth has mostly been through organic and social traffic. Eventually we’ll begin advertising more actively in other regions.
What key logistical and other challenges did you face when expanding cross border and how did you solve them?
Here is a short list of problems we faced:
- Customers that were unhappy about duty charges
- Filling out customs forms individually was becoming a hassle as volumes increased
- We used to lose some package internationally, either to delivery issues or getting stuck in customs
- We didn’t have a good solution for international express shipments.
We were able to solve all these challenges by working with FlavorCloud (better rates, pre-paid duty, FedEx Express, pre-completed customs forms) which has helped us scale our international shipping.
Well, thanks for the kind words, Jonas. We appreciate it. What recommendations do you have for other merchants that would like to build a global brand?
Start with a market to gain experience, and then incrementally scale – FlavorCloud is a great solution for this. Also, get your international shipments out as soon as you receive them, because likely they will have the longest transit time and every day counts.
That’s great advice. To finish the Q&A off, what fun fact about your product (chocolate) would you like to share with us?
Pure chocolate has many flavor possibilities, just like fine wines. In addition to terroir, roasting, and “conching”, a key flavor development step is fermentation of the cacao beans. As soon as the cacao pods are harvested, they are split open to collect the beans, which must be added to fermentation boxes within 24 hours. The carefully managed 5 to 7 day wild ferment can determine the difference of cacao beans that will win international awards and cacao beans that never even reach export quality.