Malena Lopez-Maggi and Clive Brown, the founders of Xocolate Bar, discovered artisan chocolates while vending at a fine craft fair in 2005. They are both artists and chocolate gave them a way to make a living that involved less toxic, abrasive materials. They enjoyed the sculptural capabilities and sensual qualities of chocolate.

Malena Clive set out to create a company that has beautiful chocolates, world class favors, and California sensibilities. They buried themselves in chocolate research, reading every book they could. They traveled to cacao groves in Bali and Dominican Republic to taste chocolate in its rawest form. They tasted bonbons all over London, Paris and Santiago to learn the state of the art of molded confections. Malena learned the science and proper handling of chocolate at Richardson Researches, UC Davis Food Science Department. Then in 2006 they opened Xocolate Bar and in 2008 they moved to Berkeley.

Xocolate Bar is fair trade company that only uses organic ingredients and all-natural flavors and is free of trans-fat and high fructose corn syrup. They work primarily with dark chocolate and they have a large selection of vegan chocolates as well.