Understanding Chocolate Percentages

If you’ve ever looked at a chocolate bar and seen percentages like 70%, 85%, or 100%, you might have wondered: What do those numbers actually mean? This is one of the most common questions we get.

Simply put, the percentage on a chocolate bar refers to the amount of refined cacao in the bar. For example, in a 70% dark chocolate bar, 70% of the bar is made from cacao (which includes cacao nibs and cocoa butter). The remaining 30% is usually made up of sugar or a sugar substitute.

A 100% dark chocolate bar contains only cacao and no added sugar. These bars are unsweetened and usually very intense and bitter. The higher the percentage, the “darker” and less sweet the chocolate typically tastes.

Bean-to-Bar Chocolate and Ingredients

Since we are a bean-to-bar chocolate maker, the cacao in our bars comes directly from whole cacao beans, which we carefully roast and refine ourselves.  Many large chocolate companies don’t start with cacao beans. Instead, they use cacao byproducts like:

• Cocoa mass

• Cocoa liquor

• Cocoa powder


If you see cocoa powder listed in the ingredients, that’s usually a sign of lower quality chocolate.

We’ll go deeper into cacao byproducts in another post, but for now, remember this: There is often (though not always) a correlation between the quality of the chocolate and whether the chocolate maker starts with cacao beans.

How to Read a Chocolate Label

Want to know what the rest of the chocolate bar is made of? Check the ingredient list. Ingredients must be listed in order, from ingredients with the highest concentration to the lowest.

If the percentage of cacao isn’t listed, that’s a big red flag. Most likely, you’re dealing with a low-quality chocolate bar that’s mostly sugar. If sugar is the first ingredient, that means it’s the main ingredient in the bar—not cacao.

Does a Higher Percentage Always Mean Less Sweet?

Not always! While lower percentage chocolate bars are generally sweeter, the natural flavor of the cacao plays a big role. Some cacao beans are naturally less bitter and more fruity, which can make even an 80% dark chocolate taste surprisingly sweet.

How cacao is fermented, dried, roasted, and refined affects its flavor and bitterness. For example, some of our chocolate bars in the 80-85% range taste as sweet as some 70% bars.

Our goal is to use just enough sugar to balance out the bitterness so you can enjoy the unique flavors of each cacao origin. We focus on letting the cacao’s natural taste shine, not covering it up with sugar.

So far, we haven’t found or made a bar darker than 85% that we truly enjoy, but we continue to experiment and hope to create one soon.