I did not need to invent its purpose.

I had been circling cacao for years before I understood what THRUM was.

It showed up in kitchens, practice rooms, long conversations and ordinary afternoons. Sometimes as ceremony. Sometimes as food. Sometimes just because I wanted something dark and warm in my hands.

Then I tasted this cacao.

It was not trying to mimic the chocolate I knew from a bar. It was more vivid. More herbal. Less polished, in the familiar sense. And in water it became strangely complete: full, dark, almost architectural.

Then I learned why. The cacao came from Oaxaca and had been washed rather than fermented, part of a living regional way of preparing cacao for drinking. The qualities that made it unusual as a chocolate bar were the same ones that made the drink so compelling.

I did not want to build another ceremonial-cacao company. I did not want to make a wellness powder or tell people what they were supposed to feel. I wanted the cup on a Tuesday.

For a while I thought I wanted to own a café. Eventually I realized I was more interested in what could happen inside one.

So THRUM is for cafés, and kitchens, and the table when somebody comes over. For three in the afternoon, after dinner, before work, during a conversation, or for no reason beyond wanting the cup.

THRUM exists to make unusual whole cacao ordinary enough to live with, without flattening the source, the craft or the history that made it possible.

Jasmine Bell, Founder, THRUM

THRUM begins with single-origin cacao lavado from San Felipe de León, in Oaxaca’s Sierra Norte, washed rather than fermented and chosen for what it becomes as a drink.

Chocolate Alchemy roasts and refines it in Eugene, Oregon.

THRUM does not claim to own lavado or drinking cacao. The tradition is older than the brand. Our job is to make the modern cup worthy of it.