How Oodaalolly’s Hernan Lauber Celebrates Filipino Chocolate and Culture with Swiss Technique

It’s tempting to see the word “Oodaalolly” and assume it is likewise of Filipino origin since the brand is of Filipino origin. “It’s like ‘eureka!’” the brand’s website reports, “but for chocolate.” Its meaning, however, and its true origin story, have a decidedly American bent to it. “It’s from Disney’s Robin Hood,” says Hernan Lauber, founder of Bay Area-based Oodaalolly. “When my son was a kid, that song was the only way I could get him to settle down.” The song was the only guaranteed way to put a smile on his son’s face, and Lauber knew he wanted to use it as a company name before he even knew that company would be based in chocolate.

As an expression of joy, Oodaalolly is a fitting moniker not only for a product that is known to stimulate endorphins, but one that celebrates Filipino culture through a unique, diasporic lens.

Filipino Origin, Swiss Upbringing

Hernan Lauber, founder of Bay Area-based Oodaalolly

While Lauber was born in the Philippines, his family moved to Switzerland, his father’s country of origin, when he was very young. “My dad is a Swiss chocolatier,” he says, “so I grew up learning and making chocolate my whole life. I started as a dishwasher in fourth grade, then I started helping making ganache and decorating truffles and then helping with the shipping department. When I was in college, I even built my dad’s first e-commerce website. So it was always in my life, but I never intended to follow in the family footsteps.”

During his lifetime Lauber’s family also had stints in Canada and Philadelphia, where his father continues to work making Swiss chocolate. Following an MBA, another stint living in Europe, and one in Australia, where he witnessed a rising interest in the bean-to-bar movement, Lauber encouraged his father to tap into that momentum. “I always was telling my dad that he should get into the bean-to-bar chocolate business, and that the market is moving,” says Lauber. “Initially, he was like, ‘that's not for the US consumer. They don't want that kind of chocolate. It's too expensive.’”

Filipino Chocolate, Swiss Technique

Settling in the Bay Area after his time abroad in Europe and Australia, during which time the bean-to-bar movement had hit the United States, “I was excited to try all this chocolate that had sourced cacao from the Philippines,” says Lauber. “And I thought, this is good chocolate. It's definitely better than what I think of in terms of bean-to-bar chocolate, but it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, because I grew up eating Swiss chocolate.”

Unable to convince his father to give Filipino bean-to-bar chocolate a go, along with the realization that he could perhaps improve upon the bean-to-bar market by combining Filipino chocolate with Swiss chocolate-making techniques, Lauber finally came to the realization that this was the Oodaalolly business he was perhaps destined to create.

“Swiss chocolate uses conching,” says Lauber, a slow method of processing chocolate that uses an agitator to almost polish the chocolate and evenly distribute cocoa butter among the particles. “They also use a lot of milk powders, and I grew up with those processes in the back of my mind, which informed how I think the flavors and textures of chocolate should be. That's when I thought I should try to make some chocolate.”

Cacao in the Philippines

Hernan Lauber in the Philippines with cacao pods

While cacao is not an indigenous crop in the Philippines, it is one that nonetheless thrives within Filipino agriculture, which echoes Lauber’s own story of being a transplant with similar success in new lands.

“From a historical perspective, the Philippines was the landing spot for cacao during the Spanish galleon trades,” explains Lauber, “but it's not a common Philippine food (in chocolate bar form) just because of the weather.”

Grown mainly as a cash crop, Filipino chocolate is available in several strains and hybrids, and the Philippines is now the largest producer of cocoa in Asia. “What's interesting about cacao is that it's a shade crop,” says Laubner. “It doesn't do well in an open field, and it needs to be amongst other trees. What imparts, in my opinion, some of the unique characteristics of the actual flavor of the cacao is that it's specifically grown amongst other Filipino agriculture.”

Celebrating Filipino Culture Through Chocolate

After launching Oodaalolly at a Filipino Night Market in San Francisco in 2017, Lauber has continued to shape the brand to be an expression of not only Filipino culture, but of Filipino-Swiss-American culture through every aspect of the chocolate and the business. Inclusions reflect other Filipino products such as pangasinan, a pink sea salt, and calamansi, a native citrus. Oodaalolly has partnered with other Filipino and Filipino American brands for cross promotions such as with Kasama Rum, (also crafted by a Filipino-American with European heritage,) Mostra Coffee, and beauty-brand Filipinta, through which they created a chocolate-scented lipstick. The artwork for each bar is designed by Filipino artists, and the chocolate molds themselves were designed by Lauber’s business partner, in the pattern of various Filipino textiles. (Author’s note: even beyond the labels, these are some of the most physically gorgeous chocolate bars I’ve seen.)

Even the people Lauber chooses as taste-tasters for potential new products are culturally specific given whatever he’s trying to test. “We did a bar with siling labuyo, which is from the Mayon region and is basically the Filipino version of a Thai pepper. We made it very mild so it wouldn’t hit you over the head with that heat, and we gave it to some people who are from that region,” says Lauber. “Their feedback was, ‘If you're gonna use that pepper in here, it's got to be hot. You better feel it.’”

“Feeling it” also summarizes this point in the journey of a once-reluctant, Filipino-Swiss chocolatier in America. “Part of this journey has been, what does Filipino mean to me?” says Lauber. “What's our real message here? Rather than just having a good chocolate, which I think is important, what's our story, and what is it that really sets us apart? And it's really this combination of the Swiss and the Filipino. That's what's unique about me. And that's what's unique about our chocolate.”