Finding Fortunato: How a Peruvian Adventure Inspired the Sweet Success of a Family Chocolate Business

Finding Fortunato, a business-adventure-travel-chocolate memoir that takes readers on an up close and personal journey into the northern Peruvian jungle to watch as last chance entrepreneurs accidentally stumble upon a thought to be extinct variety of cacao.

Dan Pearson was a 62-year-old man coming out of bankruptcy when he started a mining supply distribution company in northern Peru with his son-in-law Brian Horsley. Like almost all of Dan’s previous businesses, the mining supply company soon came to an end and Brian found himself married, with a child, and living in Peru without a job. 

Through a series of completely unpredictable lucky breaks, Brian and Dan found a population of cacao growing in a remote canyon of the Peruvian jungle that the USDA called “an unprecedented discovery”. With no job and no other way to earn a living, Brian moved out to the jungle to live with cacao farmers. 

With yet another business teetering on the edge of going under, Dan and Brian realize that the only way they can survive and thrive is to completely reconstruct the way chocolate supply chains work. Instead of middlemen eating up all the profits and keeping cacao farmers in relentless poverty that leads to environmental destruction and slavery, Dan and Brian decide to give back as much as they can to their cacao farm partners. 

The new approach didn’t only save the business. It provides a blueprint for conducting environmentally sound and ethical direct trade with cacao farmers while also producing more delicious chocolate for chocolate lovers at a better price.