Our Story
Karaya Bean started with a return
Ed grew up in the northern Dominican Republic, the great-grandchild of Pablo de Luna, a smallholder farmer who worked a small plot of cacao, coffee, and dairy while raising 14 children. As a kid, Ed hand-picked coffee cherries, carried sacks of cacao, and watched the harvest happen from start to finish. In 2006, at age 12, he moved to New York City. He wouldn’t go back for 15 years.
2021
When he finally did return, a desire to reconnect took hold — with the land, and with the people he’d left behind as a kid. Cacao became the way to rebuild that relationship. But his great-grandparents were gone, and Pablo’s plantation was starting to decay. The knowledge, the land, the relationships with local farmers — all of it was quietly slipping away.
Karaya Bean is the attempt to stop that: to keep the plantation alive, build a direct network with the small farmers still working that land, and bring the cacao they grow — fine flavored, ceremonial grade, single-origin — to people who’ll appreciate what it actually is.
1996
Karaya means moon in the Taíno language. The Taíno were the Indigenous people of the Caribbean, and cacao was central to their culture long before it became a commodity — a history we’re trying to keep alive alongside the plantation itself.
