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Tom and Monica Rogan have put Sudbury on chocolate makers’ world map, winning dozens of industry awards for their premium Goodnow Farms chocolate bars, made at their Sudbury farm. But their plans for expansion might take them out of their hometown.
In the next five years, “we hope to develop a manufacturing and retail space where people would come for an experience, to learn about chocolate and watch it being made, perhaps with a space for music and events, and to showcase our local business partners,” said Tom. The change would come as the company outgrows its current commercial kitchen in a converted garage next to a 225-year-old barn and the Rogans’ home on Goodnow Road.
But, Monica noted, Sudbury lacks a defined town center, with restaurants, retail outlets and the accompanying foot traffic, that such a location needs. “Other towns, like Concord and Lexington, have such centers. Sudbury has serious historical character and beautiful old buildings, but we don’t understand why there isn’t greater interest in developing a town center idea.” Instead, they said, developers come to Sudbury and build businesses like car dealerships.
They have approached Sudbury officials with their wish to put a manufacturing and retail space in town and the need for a more customer-friendly commercial district, but with little response. In contrast, they point to Hudson’s development of its retail district, adding they get a call from Hudson town development officials every time a likely space becomes available.
In the meantime, the Rogans continue to produce the chocolate bars that won 22 awards at the 2025 International Chocolate Awards competition, including best in competition and four gold awards.
They were living in Los Angeles and making craft chocolates as a hobby, when they decided to quit their jobs and start a chocolate business. Then they decided to move to New England to do that. Tom is from western Massachusetts and graduated from Emerson College, and Monica also has connections to the area. “We wanted to be closer to family and to great schools for our kids” who are now in middle school, she said.
So Tom sold his television production business. “I think I’m the only chocolate maker with an Emmy,” he laughed, picking up the gold statue in his office. Monica left her job in real estate development. In 2015, they bought the property in Sudbury and began turning a large garage into the commercial kitchen they needed.
“It takes a village to run a small business,” Tom said. Since the kitchen is in a residential area, some things are restricted; for example, they cannot sell any chocolates at the farm. Nor can the location handle large commercial deliveries. They worked out an arrangement with Ti-Sales on nearby Hudson Road to use the loading dock and storage facilities for shipments of cacao beans and other supplies.
The Rogans become passionate when talking about the cacao growers they work with in Central and South America. Goodnow Farms Chocolate specializes in single-origin chocolates from the beans grown on one farm or in one region. They travel frequently to the area and have established relationships with individual farmers who grow the beans, ferment them and dry them to Goodnow Farms specifications, paying a premium price for the beans.
“We’ve developed a good sense of the flavors from each variety of cacao over the years,” said Tom, noting the art of making their flavored chocolate bars is pairing the selected flavor—passion fruit, maple, apple cider, coffee, caramelized onion and many others—with a specific bean to bring out the best in both.
“We take amazing quality ingredients from all our partners and then we do our best work in the kitchen.”
As an example, the Putnam Rye Whiskey chocolate bar, using whiskey from Boston Harbor Distillery, is not made by putting whiskey into the chocolate. “You can’t add water to chocolate,” said Tom. “We soak the nibs—the unground cacao—in the whiskey, then we had to experiment to get the right percentage of soaked and unsoaked nibs for the finished bar.”
“We believe our chocolate is food, not candy. It’s seeds and a little sugar,” said Monica. “We take amazing quality ingredients from all our partners and then we do our best work in the kitchen.” Her hope is the experience tasting the finished product helps people to connect to all those who created it.
The chocolate business does have its challenges right now. Climate change is affecting the cacao growing area, roughly 10 degrees latitude on each side of the equator. Prices skyrocketed a couple of years ago after a drought with prices for commodity cacao tripling to $12,000 a ton. The beans used in Goodnow Farms chocolates are much more expensive than commodity beans.
“The taxes small businesses are paying now—what’s being called tariffs—are really hard for us to survive,” said Tom. Those tariffs are impacting both cacao and the sugar the firm imports from Brazil, even though those products cannot be produced in the United States. He added that the dismantling of USAID, which provided assistance and education to the farmers in Central and South America, may also impact future supply.
Processing the single-origin beans, pressing the cocoa butter, even hand-wrapping each completed bar, is a labor-intensive process. It takes one to two weeks to produce each bar. Goodnow Farms Chocolate has wonderfully detailed descriptions of growing and processing the beans and making the chocolate on its website.
Goodnow Farms sells its chocolate through specialty shops around the country, and in Canada and western Europe. Annual sales are about $1 million, Tom said. The company has tours and tastings at its Sudbury facility in the spring and fall. Goodnow Farms Chocolate bars are available in Sudbury at Duck Soup in Mill Village; retail locations in other towns are on the website here.
Nancy Brumback is a freelance reporter living in Sudbury.