Honeymoon Chocolates: A Truly Sweet Love Story
From Dorm Room to Factory
Cam and Haley Loyet photo credit Honeymoon Chocolate
Growing up in Southern Illinois, Cam Loyet’s family tried to eat healthily due to his father’s medical concerns, which sparked his love for dark chocolate. As a kid, Cam used his monthly allowance to buy dark chocolate because not only was it a treat, but it had proven health benefits, such as being rich in antioxidants. “That was kind of the beginning of my love for chocolate,” says Cam. “My parents would make this dark chocolate raspberry cake with Hershey’s special dark for my birthday and it’s the basis for one of our best-selling and longest-standing chocolate bars: the dark raspberry bar.”
The origin of Honeymoon Chocolates goes back to when he and his partner Haley Loyet were college students experimenting with chocolate in a dorm room. Haley was a fantastic baker and the two combined their love of sweets, making desserts together and creating chocolate in their dorm rooms, which ultimately allowed them to play with honey.“That hobby blossomed into looking for an alternative sweetener,” says Cam. “Honey was the only unrefined sweetener we could find in the middle of Illinois, second to maple syrup.” Their relationship also blossomed into marriage for the chocolate makers.
In 2016, they made their first chocolate bar with honey, and their brand Honeymoon Chocolates was officially born. A year later, the duo moved down to St. Louis to pursue graduate degrees in hopes of propelling the company ahead and later began raising funds to help push the product into the market. Today, Cam and Haley now have their team and factory based in St. Louis where they manufacture chocolate bars and other confections. While the public cannot visit the factory and they closed their retail store to focus on the wholesale side of their business, their products are available at 200 different retailers and online.
“The core foundation of Honeymoon is just an ethical chocolate bar sweetened with raw honey,” says Cam. “And the compostable packaging for its wrapper makes it carbon neutral.” They work with Uncommon Cacao to source cacao from countries including Haiti, Peru, Belize and Uganda and give a percentage of their profits to researching how to protect bees. Focused on sustainability, they have experimented with cacao husks to make a chocolate tea.
Top-Selling Chocolates
Dark Raspberry Bar
Chocolate raspberry photo credit Honeymoon Chocolate
“Our bestseller has always been our dark raspberry bar,” says Cam. Made with 70% Maya Mountain Belize Cacao, Missouri wildflower and clove raw honey, and pure raspberries, the overall flavor profile is rich without being overwhelming. “It plays off of the sour notes of the raspberry and the fruity notes of our cocoa. It’s a nice traditional pairing of raspberry and dark chocolate.”
Chocolate-Covered Raw Honeycomb bar photo credit Honeymoon Chocolate
This newly launched item is made of raw honeycomb from Pure Southern Honey located in Georgia and is covered in Organic Haitian Cacao chocolate. Here, you’ll typically find “either mild fruity notes or some of the coffee-tasting notes,” says Cam. “But what’s more forward on the palate is going to be the floral notes from the honeycomb.”
77% Semuliki Forest Uganda Dark Chocolate bar photo credit Honeymoon Chocolate
A combination of Semuliki Forest Uganda cacao harvested from female farmers and Missouri raw honey, the taste here is fruity with hints of roasted chocolate. “It has some really fun tasting notes of banana pear, and then chocolate mousse,” says Cam. “Some notes we really love in parallel with the Missouri wildflower honey.”
Honeymoon Chocolates offers many limited-edition chocolate bars such as the 73% Haiti + Rye Whiskey Bar along with the Tis the Season Bar and Holiday Blend Bar made with coffee and spices. Be sure to stay in the know on the latest sweet treats the company offers by visiting their Instagram page.