The crew at Zachariah’s Chocolates is shown. From left, Jessie Rearick with fudge, baker Dawn Hane with macarons and Zachariah Polasky with some of the shop’s specialty chocolate bars — show off a few of the products they make from scratch for sale.(Daily News photo by Betsy Bloom)

KINGSFORD — Zachariah Polasky is on a mission: Show people what true chocolate is meant to be.

A chocolate developed straight from the cacao bean, with all natural ingredients.

The version most Americans are familiar with is not recognized as chocolate by most of the rest of the world, Polasky said. Chocolate in the U.S. can have as little as 10% cacao, compared with at least 20% and usually more in Europe. U.S. chocolates permit artificial vanilla as well, he said.

“It’s going to take a little bit to educate the community on what real chocolate is,” Polasky said.

Polasky lists his Zachariah’s Chocolates business as the only “bean to bar” producer in the Upper Peninsula, with each batch stone-ground on site in Kingsford. The business uses no liquors, oils, emulsifiers or artificial ingredients.

“Everything is made from scratch here,” the 40-year-old said. “All of the ingredients can be traced back to their origin farms.”

The onset of COVID-19 prompted Polasky down the path to making chocolate, by way of coffee. He and partner Jessie Rearick decided during the pandemic shutdown to take classes in February on how to roast coffee beans at Mill City Roasters in Minneapolis, which offers equipment and education.

But the coffee roaster they ordered faced shipping delays due to the pandemic. So they turned to chocolate, another type of bean that needed to be roasted but only took three months to learn how to do, Polasky said.

That doesn’t mean chocolate doesn’t have its own preparation challenges. Like coffee, cacao beans are grown in a number of countries, with different soils and climates that can yield different flavor profiles. How the beans are roasted, in turn, can result in further variations in how the chocolate tastes.

Each step in converting cacao bean to chocolate takes precision, those at Zachariah’s Chocolates said.

“Chocolate is very temperamental … it has to be completely controlled,” Polasky said.

“At all stages,” added Rearick, who specializes in making fudge.

Chocolate can be further affected by the climate in which its produced. At the Kingsford shop, the humidity is kept so it never climbs above 37%.

“Coffee, you just roast and bag,” Polasky said.

He estimated they gave out 80 pounds of samples in the early months to gauge public reaction to how well the chocolate was coming together.

The shop opened Oct. 28 at 1111 S. Carpenter Ave. in Kingsford. But they’ve done wholesale work with their chocolate bars since August, starting on Joann’s Fudge on Mackinac Island; Rearick made fudge on the island for about 15 years. Polasky estimated they produce about 5,000 bars a month.

The wholesale side still is the main part of the business, along with product shows. They’re double-booked each weekend through April in the Midwest, and might go to orders only after the holidays.

“The weekends are our bread and butter,” Polasky said.

As with most things made with premium ingredients or materials, Zachariah’s Chocolates do carry a higher price at $10 each. The bars can contain wild-grown cacao beans from Peru, Colombia and Bolivia.

They produce truffles as well, switching up fillings that feature such flavor combinations as brown butter, peanut butter honey and cherry/rose cashew. They have giant “turtle”-style candies with fresh caramel, pecans and chocolate; cashews grown in Bali that are roasted with local Stag Farm honey — also sold on site — or other seasonings; and flavored popcorns such as spicy dill and green taffy apple with nuts.

Dawn Hane of Norway joined the business in late October to handle baking macarons, biscotti, walnut and pecan baklava, kolaches, scones and oversized chocolate chip cookies. She’s classically French-trained at a culinary school in Chicago and has 20-plus years in such work.

The weekend and wholesale business means the shop’s not always open to the public, as they can’t just cut away while making products. So Polasky recommends calling 906-221-2496 or going online to www.zachariahschocolates.com to place orders and schedule for pickup.

He does have another source of income that takes up his time as well: professional poker player, ranked in Pot Limit Omaha play.

He bills himself on Instagram as “Bean-to-bar chocolate manufacturer by day, professional poker player by night. I seek only perfection within my crafts!”