Aloha Chocolate Life family,

I am a new member on this forum but have been making and exploring chocolate for a good while now and it is a continually exciting journey for me. I have only recently scaled up and started retail sales of my bars. One of the most valuable parts of taking a passion into the business world is feedback from customers. I have found that, amongst the connoisseur types, the recent "chocolate as health food" types, the purists, the niche groups like diabetic/sugar-free dieters, and the generic customers who just like chocolate whether it's Hershey's or Bonnat, there is also a wide range of preference for sweeteners.

Personally, I feel great about providing bars that are made with 100% organic ingredients only, keeping it natural and using no fillers or flavor substitutes. Using artificial or heavily refined sweeteners or flavorings is out of the question for me. I wonder if others have done much experimenting with different (natural) sweeteners other than cane sugar, specifically for bars, and how things turned out? Not just for you, but for customers as well. Does anyone have a preference for a sweetener for chocolate bars that is not cane sugar?

I have found that maple sugar is extremely complimentary to chocolate, and people LOVE it. It is probably 20X as expensive as what most chocolate makers use however.

updated by @jonathan-simpkins: 05/21/15 05:47:47