In July 2022, Tagata Pasifika came to Glen Eden to find out who was filling West Auckland's streets with the smell of freshly roasted Samoan cocoa.
What they found was a family story. Long before Aunty Tommy's existed, cacao was already in our blood, our family farmed it in Samoa and exported it to Europe and New Zealand generations ago. Marlon grew up eating koko raw from the pod and learning to make it the traditional way. The brand carries that lineage in its name: Aunty Tommy was Marlon's grandmother and Alec's aunt.
Founded only in April 2021, the business set out to modernise the traditional koko block without losing what makes it ours. As Marlon told the reporter, the focus from day one has been accessibility: "our koko has to be accessible" — out to Pacific communities across Auckland, and then the country.
A full production facility. Cacao paste, nibs, and koko in the works. Two cousins, backgrounds in music and aviation, learning the trade their family once lived by.
That's where it started. The smell of roasting cocoa in a West Auckland suburb — and a story old enough to have travelled the world before, now coming home.
Sources
TP+ (Tagata Pasifika) — "Koko Samoa business stamps its mark in West Auckland," by Hanalei Foliaki, Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air (30 July 2022): https://tpplus.co.nz/community/koko-samoa-business-stamps-its-mark-in-west-auckland/
