Maison Marou

Marou Faiseurs de Chocolat was founded in Ho Chi Minh City in 2011 by Samuel Maruta, a former banker, and Vincent Mourou, a former advertising filmmaker, who met on a jungle survival course in Vietnam. After learning of cacao growing in the Mekong Delta region, the pair began sourcing beans directly from small farms across six provinces - Ba Ria, Lam Dong, Ben Tre, Tien Giang, Dong Nai and Dak Lak - to make single-origin, bean-to-bar chocolate, among the first such operations in Asia. They launched in November 2011, initially producing from a home kitchen with a blender, oven and cake tins, before expanding into retail cafes under the Maison Marou name.

Neither founder came from chocolate making: Mourou had worked in advertising and Maruta in finance before they began making at origin from Vietnamese cacao.