News
The 1st organic and fair trade fruit juices on the Canadian market
This week, we are so very excited to share with you that we are the very first Canadian company to offer organic and fair trade fruit juices on the Canadian market! Our tasty and refreshing line-up contains four flavours: Mango with a hint of passion fruit, Orange mango, Tropical and lastly, Limeade.
Check-out the snazzy-looking packaging!
This new product line of tasty organic and fair trade fruit juices for you means more business and more value to some of our existing partner co-operatives of family farmers in Southern countries. This innovation has also brought along new partners, Coagrosol and Coopealnor, in Brazil, adding to the total number of family farmers benefitting from our business. This product line extension came very naturally to the Camino brand. Cocoa beans and coffee beans used to make our products are grown using sustainable agricultural practices. This means that the beans are shade grown: a natural canopy of trees is grown to naturally shade the bean crops. This canopy serves as a habitat for birds that take care of pest protection and provide a natural fertilizer. Often times, these trees are fruit trees. CEPICAFE, a co-operative of family farmers in Peru, is an existing partner of ours that uses fruit trees as a natural canopy for their coffee and cocoa beans and is harvesting some of the fruits used to make the new line of Camino fruit juices.
All juices will be distributed this spring in natural health food stores and in certain grocery stores where you can find an offering of organics or natural health foods. Cheers to another great step forward on the path, or the camino in Spanish, of the joyful food revolution!
Taste of change. Taste of Camino.
Ottawa Sommeliers pair wines with Camino chocolate for event hosted by MediaStyle
On Tuesday February 22, MediaStyle, an Ottawa-based progressive communications company, hosted an event for the International Association of Business Communicators Ottawa. What a chic event! Three local renowned sommeliers paired wines with Camino chocolates: Orange (65% cacao), Bittersweet (71% cacao) and Panama extra dark (80% cacao). In true MediaStyle fashion, the soirée was avant-garde: three fantastic videos were produced to bring attendees of the evening right into each sommelier's work environment, where inspiration is at its best.
Looking at the awesome videos, you’ll be tempted to try all pairings!
Taste of change. Taste of Camino.
Winners unveiled for Camino’s I love you berry much! Contest!
Wow! We are so happy with the level of participation around our Valentine’s Day contest. Many thanks to all participants that have shared their creative ways of saying I love you with a Camino Raspberries bar. We were overcome with lovey-dovey feelings all week which made our Valentine’s week exciting and fun.
After having deliberated, the panel of Judges made up of two La Siembra employees and one 1-20MEDIA employee, has selected three winners:
Our grand prize winner of a year’s stock of Camino Chocolate is Love drizzled all over a popsicle by Sarah Bird. Sarah will receive a case (12 bars) of Camino 100 g chocolate bars in a new flavour each month for twelve months.
Runners up Ô ma déesse chocolatée by Mathieu Robillard and Oui, je le veux ! by Murielle Boucher, will each receive a case (12 bars) of Camino 100 g Raspberries bars.
Congrats to our winners!
Extra Valentine’s Day Sweetness
Each participant having received enough votes to classify within the top ten will receive a Camino 100 g Raspberries bar as a participation prize.
Top Ten Submissions: Je t’aime pour te partager ma Camino...mais, Oui, je le veux!, Oh! So Sweet, Ô ma déesse chocolatée, Love drizzled all over a popsicle, Ça réchauffe le coeur et le corps, The way to your love’s heart is through the stomach!, Robot Romance, Camino, Chocolate Raspberry Lava Cake.
View all contest submissions and winners here.
Taste of change. Taste of Camino.
I love you berry much!
Win one year’s supply of Camino chocolate!
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Celebrate Valentine’s Day with Camino. Share with us either in writing, drawing, poetry, picture or even by video, how you would say ‘I love you’ to your loved one with a Raspberries bar.
Creativity is a must! A Raspberries chocolate square in their coffee? A surprise in their lunch box? A special delivery at the office?
1st prize – A year’s supply of Camino chocolate: one case (12 bars) of one flavour of Camino 100 g chocolate bars will be mailed to you each month for 12 months. One flavour per month!
2nd and 3rd prizes – One case each (12 bars) of the Camino 100 g Raspberries bar.
How do you participate?
- Access the contest portal that will be open starting at 12 p.m. EST on February 14th, 2011.
- Complete the registration form.
- Post your creative idea.
- Share your entry with your friends.
- The contest will close on at midnight EST on February 20th, 2011.
Entries will be judged by the public. The 10 entries that will have received the most votes will be finalists. Among the finalists, the Camino panel of judges will select three winning entries based on the following criteria: creativity of the idea, clarity of the idea and feasibility of the idea. Winners will be contacted by email or by telephone after 4 p.m. EST on February 22nd, 2011.
Taste of change. Taste of Camino.
Camino partners with Cuban organic and fair trade co-operatives
Camino is delighted to say that we have added an eighth Country to our list of Southern partners as we have begun purchasing from organic and fair trade certified co-operatives of family farmers in Cuba. Last year, we saw growth levels for our organic and fair trade sugar and hot chocolate products that, combined with the higher global demand for cane sugar used for bio diesel production, exceeded the available cane sugar supply of our long-term partner, Manduvira, a co-operative of family farmers in Paraguay. As our need for golden cane sugar has increased through new product development, we are now able to add to our number of partner co-operatives, augmenting the number of communities of family farmers we reach through fair trade premiums without restraining our level of demand for golden cane sugar products from Manduvira.
The addition of new Cuban partners to Camino’s supply chain network means an increase in the number of partners with which we maintain a direct relationship: a differentiating pillar of our co-operative business model. It also represents a decrease in our carbon footprint through shorter transportation distances, staying true to our environmental values.
Four organic and fair trade certified co-operatives of family farmers located in the Villa Clara province of Cuba will now supply us with golden cane sugar, in addition to Manduvira in Paraguay, for the production of our sugar and hot chocolate products. Each of these co-operatives has close to, or over 100 members. This means that Camino’s reach expands to almost 400 additional family farmers, contributing to the development of vibrant sustainable communities in Cuba through organic agricultural practices and fair trade. The history of Cuban sugar in the past century has been a story of significant hardship. “By working with co-operatives of family farmers in Cuba, we will be building capacity within the sector and we will be providing an increased marketplace for Cuban producers. At the same time, this means growth for us, and growth is good,” says Henk van der Molen, COO.
We will be working on posting additional information on our Cuban partners in the New Year.
Taste of change. Taste of Camino.
Cocoa Camino becomes Camino.
We have been extremely excited in the office this past month because, as of October 18th, we have had our new look on store shelves. That’s right, Cocoa Camino becomes Camino. This means that our brand name and its look and feel are changing – rest assured – our products still have the same great taste and the same great quality.
Why? We are returning to our days of being a pioneer. In 2002, we became the first North American company to offer organic and fair trade certified chocolate bars and hot chocolates on the Canadian market. In the past years, we have built a network of partner co-operatives of family famers that have diversified their crops. This has opened the door for us to create new organic and fair trade products, outside the realm of cocoa and sugar, offering you new and healthier alternatives in food categories where you want to see them.
Our new look is vibrant and colourful; you will not miss it! Look for a rainbow of colours on your favourite grocery store’s shelves. The colourful map on our packaging represents what responsible business practices bring to the world: vibrant sustainable communities here and abroad. The map depicts where we’d all like to grow older and where we’d want our children to grow up. Camino is all about enjoying quality food and feeling good about the food you eat while contributing to sustainable social development for a better world, worlds apart, but really, your world. We call it the joyful food revolution.
Taste of change. Taste of Camino.
New Camino chocolate snack bars tantalize taste buds in Toronto
Camino’s Sales and Marketing teams were happy to unveil their new line of sweet and salty chocolate snack bars during the Canadian Health Food Association (CHFA) East Tradeshow and during the Grocery Innovation Show in Toronto from October 23rd through to October 26th, 2010.
Sweet. Salty. All natural. These snack-sized bars are made with dark chocolate (55% cocoa) combined with three popular flavours: Peanut butter, Almond butter and Almonds and raisins. They are easy to eat on the go and are sure to hit the spot when it comes to sweet and salty cravings. Price? Around $1.59! These chocolate snack bars, as all Camino products, are organic and fair trade.
Our Sales Team witnessed the best reaction they could have ever imagined at the booth. The young daughter of a retailer walked to the booth and immediately spotted the peanut butter snack bar samples. As soon as she popped a sample in her mouth, she started jumping up and down: “Mmmmm!!! Dad, you gotta try this!”
You will soon be able to find our new line of chocolate snack bars in all natural health food stores and certain grocery stores. Let us know if they make you jump up and down too!
