A note from José Durán, Co-Founder of Durca Chocolate
It was always in the afternoons… The sun would fall slowly over the waters of Hong Kong, and my father and I would swim as the sky turned gold. Those were the moments when our conversations found depth in questions that remained with me and shaped how I would come to see the world. I was eleven when I asked him what his greatest dream in life was. He smiled, calm and assured, and said, “To help others have joy and achieve their dreams.” It was such a simple answer, yet it carried the weight of everything he believed in: purpose, kindness, and the enduring strength of working for others.
Years later, I see how that moment became the beginning of Durca. My father, David Durán, is the hardest-working person I know. I have seen him spend countless nights at the atelier, crafting chocolate by hand, producing hundreds of bars when we had no team, no rest, only determination. I remember us preparing our first order of 500 Golden Bars: he made the chocolate, and I built the boxes. Each hour was driven by love and the purpose of creating something that mattered. Even today, his rhythm continues, the steady momentum in production, the precision, the patience. He listens to podcasts while tempering cacao, always learning, always curious. Just now, a message arrived: “1,000 new Grand Cru Bars completed.”
That spark he carried in his eyes when I was a child is still there. He has always said, “Together, in steady movement, we create the path towards our future.” That steady movement is what built Durca.
That rhythm has become the essence of Durca, a legacy in motion. Every decision, every harvest, every creation grows from that same devotion, the wish to share joy through the beauty of work done with heart. Durca lives in the stillness between effort and gratitude. It lives in the soft sound of the cacao beans drying in the sun, in the patience of our farmers, in the moment someone tastes a bar and pauses. That pause is joy, it is the feeling that tells us we are part of something meaningful.
When I think back to that afternoon, I understand what my father meant. Joy is not an arrival. It is the way we move through life, the gratitude of creating something that connects one heart to another. Through Durca, that feeling continues to grow, across oceans, through hands, through time.
Joy, I’ve learned, is not something we win or chase. It is a way of being present. It is the gratitude that fills the air when purpose and passion align. Durca exists because of that belief: that through craft, through family, through the patient rhythm of creating, joy will always find its way into what we share with the world.