What makes a winning chocolate bar!!!

Before reading the analysis see if you can create a winning chocolate bar by answering the following quiz.

https://take.quiz-maker.com/QJ4TIOOCU

If you do not have the time to read the report now. You can see how to make a winning chocolate bar at https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/niel6365/viz/Makingawinningchocolatebar/Story1#1

The project

Over the last few years in my personal experience have seen that the chocolate industry has been slowly growing and getting more diverse in the options of chocolate that customers can buy. When I was growing up the chocolate industry consisted mostly of companies such as Gadbury’s Nestle and Mars. Slowly over time, more and more chocolate brands have come into the market. Especially the chocolate percentage in the bars has been rising up to even some chocolate bars containing up to 90% or higher percentage of chocolate beans. I wanted to know what makes a winning chocolate bar in chocolate competitions. I found a data set on Chocolate Bar ratings from 2006 to 2022. The data is on Kaggle https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/nyagami/chocolate-bar-ratings-2022. The data comes from the following website https://flavorsofcacao.com/index.html. The dataset consisted of chocolate reviews between 2006 and 2022. The chocolate bars' ratings were on a scale of 1-5.With 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest. All of the ratings are by the Manhattan Chocolate Society.

The data consisted of ten variables

• Ref(reference number)REF (reference number). The highest REF numbers were the last entries made. They are not unique values
• Company name or manufacturer
• Date of review of the chocolate ratings
• Origin of bean (country)
• Specific bean origin or bar name
• Cocoa percent
• Ingredients
• Most memorable characteristics
• Rating

After reviewing the data:?

I imagined that I was hired by a new company that was started by chocolatiers. Among the company's products were high-end chocolate bars. Bean to chocolate is the company's name.

It was the company's goal to draw attention to its products by entering competitions.?

How to create a successful chocolate bar can be determined by answering the following questions:

1. Which companies are the new company's biggest competitors in the competitions
2. What are the chocolate bars' main ingredients and what rating did they receive:
3. Chocolate bars with the highest ratings were sourced from which locations
4. According to its percentage of chocolate, a chocolate bar is rated as follows
5. What words were most used in describing a chocolate bar that got a rating of 4.0

Key insights:

• There are a number of companies that have received high ratings in competition.?
• A number of different ingredients were used to create the highest-rated chocolate.?
• The chocolate bar beans with the highest rating came from a number of countries.?
• From the data, I found there has never been a chocolate bar that got a rating above 4.0.

Analysis of the dataset:

Cleaning and analyzing the dataset at first glance:

A new unique reference number column was created so the number of chocolate bars rated could be calculated. 2588 chocolate bars have been rated.

Which companies are the new? company’s biggest competitors in competitions:

This was done by looking at which companies got the highest rating for their chocolate bars.?

These are some of the new company's main competitors. Seeing as they received their chocolate bars received the highest rating of 4.00 out of 5.0.

How are chocolate bars rated by judges:

The following form was obtained from https://flavorsofcacao.com/review_guide.html

What are the chocolate bars' main ingredients and what rating did they receive:

The letters in the above image can be explained in the following way:

B = Beans

S = Sugar

S* = Sweetener other than white cane or beet sugar

C = Cocoa Butter

V = Vanilla

L = Lecithin

Sa = Salt

It is hoped that using ingredients that have been rated highly in the past will contribute to the company receiving a high score in chocolate competitions.?

Chocolate bars with the highest ratings were sourced from which locations:

The number of beans used in chocolate bars that receive high ratings seems to come from the following countries which can be seen in the above map.

According to its percentage of chocolate, a chocolate bar is rated as follows:

The graphs show that the chocolate bars that received a high rating do not necessarily have the highest percentage of chocolate. Most of the chocolate bars with the highest rating seem to have a chocolate percentage between 60% to 80%.?

What were the words most used in describing a great chocolate bar?

The descriptive term for the winning chocolate bar had to be used at least 137 times out of? 276 times to be included in the image above.?

The information below it would help the chocolatiers in creating chocolate bars that would suit the judge's palette.?

I did find the following information on https://flavorsofcacao.com/review_guide.html to give a better idea of how chocolate is rated and what some of the words might mean.

Recommendations:

If the Bean to chocolate company wants to have a winning chocolate bar in competitions. The following would be recommended.?

At least a few chocolate bars should be entered in the competition it is recommended the bars entered should contain the following mixture of ingredients in this order:

1. Beans, sugar
2. Beans, sugar, cocoa butter
3. Beans, sugar, cocoa butter, lecithin
4. Beans, sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla
5. Beans, sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla, lecithin

For example bar 1 should mostly consist of only beans and sugar.

Chocolate beans from the following countries should be used for the competition:

• Mexico
• Belize
• Guatemala
• Nicaragua
• Costa Rica
• Jamaica
• Haiti
• Dominican Republic
• St. Lucia
• Tobago
• Venezuela
• Colombia
• Ecuador
• Peru
• Bolivia
• Brazil
• Ghana
• Sao Tome
• Uganda
• Tanzania
• Madagascar
• Vietnam
• Indonesia
• Papua New Guinea
• Solomon Islands

The percentage of cocoa used in the chocolate bar should be between 60% and 80%.?

Certain limitations should be kept in mind. The data only includes ratings from the Manhattan Chocolate Society. Also, the ratings are only limited to one competition. This might mean that simply because the chocolate bar would receive a high rating by the Manhattan Chocolate Society standards it may not receive a high rating in another chocolate competition such as The International Chocolate Awards.?

Thank you for reading the report. Would love any feedback you might have. Please contact me if you have any questions or comments. You can look at my other projects on Linkedin.

Niel de Kock