Amano Artisan Chocolate is a food and drink brand founded in Orem, Utah, in 2005.
In high school, Art Pollard worked at a university nuclear reactor, and in college he worked on the Topolotron, BYU's pinch fusion facility. He says he wanted to go into plasma physics until funding for the field bottomed out. While designing equipment for the physics department, he started building his own chocolate refiner. That side project eventually became Amano Artisan Chocolate in Orem.
The goal dated to his 1996 honeymoon, when he decided American chocolate could be better. The company's 2006 history says he took notes on chocolate books "far more than he ever did in college." He founded Amano in 2005 with business partner Clark Goble.
The factory runs on old equipment, including a 1920s German melangeur that grinds cocoa under 1,300-pound granite rollers. BYU Magazine reported that one plantation Amano buys from can be reached only by horseback. In 2009 its 70 percent Madagascar bar won gold at London's Academy of Chocolate Awards, the academy's highest award to an American company for bean to bar dark chocolate.
Until 2015 every bar was single origin. The name is Italian, and BYU Magazine says amano means both "by hand" and "they love," which covers the homemade refiner and the honeymoon.
Amano was the first American chocolate maker to work with the rare Chuao cacao bean from Venezuela.
