Big Chocolate Left West Africa. The Americas Got the Contract.
EXPORT TRAILS
The Map Is Moving. So Are the Good Things.
Issue
#6
| April [date], 2026 | Rural Exports
Coffee, cocoa, and wine. Three of the sexiest food groups on the planet. All three are shifting right now.
Hershey and Nestlé have been in the news this month for changing up the chocolate world — pivoting sourcing, reformulating recipes, and quietly rewriting the supply map. My coffee bill keeps climbing and it's getting harder to source beans that are reasonably priced and not stale. And here in East Texas, I've watched dairy farms turn into wineries. Texas wine is gaining traction. Most of it still gets consumed within state lines — partly because our climate means most bottles need added sulfites — but production is scaling and the quality is real.
As the US shifts trade lanes, and as geopolitics and tariffs put friction on the routes we've relied on, new territories are opening up. This edition of Export Trails scopes out where those new corridors are forming, why they're forming, and what they mean for producers, buyers, and operators in the short and the long term.
—Robyn
The Corridors Are Shifting
The trade map for American food and drink is being redrawn. Some corridors are narrowing. China is harder. The EU is under ongoing tariff friction. European specialty imports are getting expensive fast. Other corridors are opening wide.
The one to pay close attention to right now is Ecuador.
Why Ecuador Matters
Three things came together in the last six months to put Ecuador at the center of the specialty food conversation.
Cocoa.
Ecuador is on track to become the world's number-two cocoa producer. Production is projected to exceed 650,000 metric tons in the 2026/27 season and reach 800,000 tons by the end of the decade. Yields run about 800 kilograms per hectare — almost double the West African average of 500 kg. Ecuadorian cocoa exports hit $3.35 billion in 2024. In 2015, Ivory Coast and Ghana combined controlled 52 percent of global cocoa bean exports. By 2024, their combined share had dropped to 32 percent. The center of gravity has moved to the Americas.
Specialty coffee.
Ecuador's high-altitude volcanic-soil regions produce specialty arabica with distinct floral and citrus profiles that gourmet roasters pay premiums for. Cocoa and coffee grow together in Ecuadorian agroforestry systems, meaning the same producers, the same logistics infrastructure, and the same export relationships can serve both supply chains.
Big Chocolate is publicly pivoting.
Hershey's Chief Supply Chain Officer told investors at the company's Investor Day in April that Hershey is diversifying cocoa sourcing away from Ivory Coast and Ghana into Ecuador and Brazil. When a Fortune 500 buyer announces at Investor Day that it's rebuilding its supply base around a new geography, the infrastructure on the ground gets built out fast.
One more thing worth noting: Ecuador has used the US dollar as its official legal tender since January 2000. No currency risk. No foreign exchange exposure. Contracts priced in USD by default. For US buyers, US coordinators, and US specialty producers looking at a new market, that eliminates one of the biggest friction points in international trade.
The Hershey Signal
Hershey also announced at the same Investor Day that it is returning Reese's and the broader Hershey's portfolio to "classic milk chocolate and dark chocolate recipes" by 2027. The company had shifted a small percentage of its products — under three percent of the Reese's line — to compound coatings that use less real chocolate. After public criticism from the grandson of Reese's founder, Hershey reversed course.
That's a real demand signal. Big Chocolate is publicly committing to use more actual cocoa, not less, at the same moment it's scaling a new sourcing geography in Ecuador. Supply rising to meet rising demand.
For US specialty food producers — craft chocolate makers, confectioners, protein bar formulators, specialty bakers — the Ecuador pivot means more traceable, direct-trade sourcing relationships available on terms Big Chocolate is paying to build out. The producers who position early will have relationships and pricing the rest of the market spends the next three years trying to catch up to.
Ecuador Is a Market, Not Just an Origin
Most US producers miss this next part. Ecuador isn't just a place to buy from. It's a market scaling up its own food and beverage industry, and that market needs US expertise, US equipment, US specialty products, and US coordination.
When Hershey publicly commits to Ecuadorian cocoa, Ecuadorian processors scale up to meet that demand. Processing capacity expands. Quality certification systems mature. Logistics and cold chain infrastructure gets built. Export documentation gets more sophisticated. And local demand — for specialty US food products, for US-made processing equipment, for US technical and coordination expertise — rises in parallel.
This is where Rural Exports is watching closely. Ecuador is becoming the kind of market where:
US specialty food producers can sell into a rising middle class with rising purchasing power, in a dollarized economy with no currency risk.
Ecuadorian producers are looking for US coordination partners to help them reach the US specialty channel — confectioners, roasters, protein bar makers, premium grocers.
US buyers need traceable, direct-trade sourcing relationships that didn't exist two years ago and need to be built on the ground.
The federal dollars available to support US producers entering new international markets through USDA's Market Access Program and Foreign Market Development Program apply directly to this kind of expansion.
This is the kind of work Rural Exports coordinates. Identifying where a producer fits in the new trade map and connecting them to the specialists — carriers, customs brokers, Ecuadorian processors, US specialty distributors — who execute each layer.
The Texas Wine Parallel
Back to the Portuguese wine on my kitchen counter.
While Iberian wine is getting priced out of mainstream American grocery stores, Texas wine is filling the gap. Texas is now the fifth-largest wine-producing state in the country, with somewhere between 617 and 940 wineries depending on the counter, up from fewer than 40 in 2000. The Texas Hill Country and Texas High Plains AVAs produce Tempranillo, Mourvèdre, Viognier, and Picpoul Blanc at award-winning quality — the exact varieties that the Portuguese, Spanish, and southern French regions have historically supplied. Texas wine won 295 awards at the 2024 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, second only to California.
Only about one percent of Texas wine is currently sold outside of Texas.
That's not a weakness. That's an untapped corridor. The domestic version of the same principle that's making Ecuador interesting: when an import channel gets expensive, a specialty producer gets a window. The question is whether the producer has the channel fit, the distribution, and the coordination capacity to walk through it.
What This Means for Producers on This List
Three action lines worth considering if you produce food, drink, or specialty goods.
Watch the opening corridors, not the closing ones.
China, Europe, and the traditional cheap-import routes are narrowing. Ecuador, the Americas broadly, and domestic specialty channels are widening. If your business plan was built on assumptions from three years ago, it's worth asking what the new map means for your sourcing, your buyers, and your pricing.
The Big Chocolate signal is a demand leading indicator.
When Hershey and Mondelez commit publicly to more real cocoa and new geographies, the specialty food world gets about twelve to eighteen months of window to build positioning before the commodity players fully occupy the space. Craft chocolate makers, specialty coffee roasters, premium confectioners, and specialty bakers should be watching Ecuadorian sourcing relationships right now.
Domestic specialty producers have a lane.
Expensive European imports leave shelf space. Texas wine is the clearest example, but the principle applies to olive oil, cheese, preserves, specialty grains, cured meats, and a long list of categories where domestic specialty producers have quietly built quality that rivals anything imported. The question is scale and distribution, which is exactly the kind of coordination Rural Exports was built for.
Made to Scale
Rural Exports is actively watching Ecuador as a new coordination market — for US specialty food producers sourcing from Ecuadorian origins, for Ecuadorian producers entering the US specialty channel, and for the infrastructure build-out that both directions require.
If you produce specialty food or drink and you're looking at the new trade map wondering where you fit, reach out.
Email:
robynm@ruralexports.net
Web:
ruralexports.net
Sources
Supply Chain Dive,
Hershey leans on cocoa sourcing resilience
(April 2026)
Reuters /
Investing.com
,
Ecuador set to become world's No. 2 cocoa grower
(2025)
ONE Latin America,
Coffee and Cocoa Market Insights
(January 2026)
Trading Economics, Ecuador cocoa export data, UN COMTRADE (2024)
CBS News / Fox Business / Food Dive,
Hershey to return to classic Reese's recipe
(April 2026)
FEE,
The Silver Jubilee of Ecuador's Dollarization
(2025)
Texas Wine Growers / WineAmerica 2025 Economic Impact Study
Newsweek,
Texas Wine Is Soaring in Popularity
(April 2025)
Land Report,
The Market for Texas Vineyards Blooms
(May 2025)
Export Trails is the rural producer intelligence publication of Rural Exports LLC. For producers scaling beyond local markets, domestic and international.
robynm@ruralexports.net
| (945) 403-1407 |
ruralexports.net