Ingemann

Award-winning Nicaraguan cacao from more than 1,000 farming families, and raw wildflower honey from more than 100 beekeepers. I’m a partner and the CFO: I run the finance, build the organization and keep the whole thing on track.

Role: Partner and CFO
When: 2024 to now
Where: Tipitapa, with cacao and honey from across Nicaragua
Scope: Finance, organizational development, the weekly operating rhythm, and the software the company runs on

Cacao beans raked in long rows on concrete drying beds under a wide sky, drying sheds in the distance — **Ingemann,** cacao drying beds at the plant, Nicaragua, May 2026.

1M+Trees planted by Ingemann’s agroforestry program with cacao farmers
345+International awards: 5 for Ingemann’s cacao, 340 for chocolate makers using it
1,000+Farming families behind the cacao
100+Beekeepers across Nicaragua behind the honey

Ingemann’s cacao had won Cacao of Excellence three times, and almost nobody outside the chocolate world knew. When I found out, it felt like stumbling on a best-kept secret. In 2024 I became a partner and the CFO. My part is the one nobody photographs: the money, the people and the weekly rhythm that gets a wet bag of cacao from a hillside farm to a chocolate maker on the other side of the world.

Where the cacao starts

Ingemann buys wet cacao from more than 1,000 farming families, from across Nicaragua, including Matagalpa and Jinotega, and ferments and dries it in Tipitapa. At the farm gate the team measures the brix, pH and temperature of every bag before it goes into wooden fermentation boxes, and every lot can be traced back to the farms it came from.

Ingemann doesn’t make chocolate. It makes the beans chocolate makers build on, and sells them to makers, traders and processors. It keeps its own nursery and a bank of the varieties it grafts.

What I actually do

The title says CFO. The job is three things.

The finance: the books, the cash, the banks and the budget, checked against what actually happened, month by month.

The organization: who owns what, who sees which numbers, and how a decision gets made and written down. A company that buys from more than a thousand families can’t run on memory.

The rhythm: every week the cacao, honey, marketing and finance teams sit down with their numbers and their open items, and each item leaves with an owner and a date. Structure creates freedom.

More than 345 international awards

Ingemann’s cacao has won five awards of its own: three Cacao of Excellence awards and two Heirloom Cacao Preservation honors. Chocolate makers using it have won 340 more, at the International Chocolate Awards, the Academy of Chocolate and others. That’s more than 345 international awards, for cacao most chocolate lovers have never heard of.

Wild bees

Ingemann started in 2007 as beekeepers, before it ever bought cacao. Today its raw wildflower honey, organic and certified, comes from more than 100 beekeepers all over Nicaragua.

The bees forage wild, on the flowers of forests and farms, and the beekeeping stays natural and out of their way. That matters beyond the jar. Pollination is what keeps a forest, and the farms around it, producing.

A million trees

Ingemann’s agroforestry program has planted more than a million trees with cacao farmers, including on the edge of the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, the UNESCO rainforest in northern Nicaragua. Cacao grows best in shade, under other trees, so farmers plant those too, and the trees give a farm on the forest’s edge a reason to keep the forest.

That’s the loop I care about. More demand for this cacao means more demand for farms built like forests, and for beekeeping that leaves the wild alone. The Ingemann team did years of that work before I joined. Now I help carry it.

The software

At night I’m building the system the company runs on: cacao collection, fermentation and drying logs, lot traceability, export, honey, receivables and the numbers, so the whole chain shows up in one place. AI helps us do more and stay organized. The judgment stays with people.

What we’re testing

We’re always experimenting. With a PhD scientist we’re in early trials of a biological input that helps cacao defend itself and yield more. We breed queen bees. We run fermentation and drying trials, and we try to match a flavor profile, even one from another origin.

What I did

Became a partner and the CFO in 2024
Run the finance: the books, the cash, the banks, and the budget against actuals, month by month
Built the operating rhythm: weekly business reviews for cacao, honey, marketing and finance, where every open item leaves with an owner and a date
Lead organizational development: roles, decision rights, and who sees which numbers
Work on the honey strategy: pricing, a bigger network of natural beekeepers, and queen breeding
Build the company’s operating software, from the farm gate to export
Work on the experiments: a biological input in early trials, and fermentation and drying trials

Deliverables

A weekly business review the whole company runs on
A CFO dashboard that compares budget to actuals month by month
Clear rules for who sees which financial data
An operating system for the company, from the farm gate to export (in progress)
Ingemann cacao in Oro’s bars, from Tipitapa to Wicker Park

Skills

CFO work: cash, banking, budgets and credit
Organizational design and operating cadence
Agricultural supply chains and traceability
Post-harvest cacao: fermentation and drying
Software for operations
Running a company in Spanish and English

Green hills and ridgelines under a pale sky, cacao country — **Cacao country,** December 2019.

A hand holding a cacao seedling in its bag, rows of seedlings under shade net behind — **The nursery,** seedlings, December 2019.

Red cacao pods hanging from thin branches among broad green leaves — **Cacao pods** in the shade canopy, December 2019.

Split cacao pods with pink beans in white pulp laid out on a green leaf — **Fresh beans** in their pulp, December 2019.

A heap of harvested cacao pods in red, orange, yellow and purple — **The harvest,** December 2019.

A three-toed sloth on the ground in the green, looking at the camera — **A sloth** in the shade trees, December 2019.

Two workers at wooden fermentation boxes of cacao, one turning the beans with a shovel — **Fermentation boxes** at the plant, Nicaragua, May 2026.

A deep bed of fermented cacao beans in a wooden box, a worker beyond — **Fermented beans,** Nicaragua, May 2026.

A wooden hive frame of honeycomb, part capped and part open — **Honeycomb,** February 2026.

What I learned

Know where things come from. At Ingemann every bag is measured at the farm gate and every lot traces back to its farms, so quality is something you can show, not just claim.

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