Just as Antidote chocolate is beyond your typical chocolate bar, so is founder and creative force, Red Thalhammer. Born in Austria, Red (formerly Renate) began her entrepreneurial journey at the age of ten selling ice cream at her parents’ lakeside cafe in Upper Austria and many other creative side projects in her teens from designing and sewing clothes to large paintings and murals.

She is now one of a very small group of chocolate innovators who are working to expand the boundaries of the chocolate industry, as we know it.

A sharp visual sensibility led Red to the technical school of Graphic Design in Linz, Austria. After graduating, Red worked in advertising agencies in Salzburg, Linz, and Vienna in Austria, honing her skills in a variety of disciplines. After moving to New York City in her late 20’s without a job or a network Red freelanced first with branding firms and then set up her own business as a brand designer, and began
collaborating with large companies on ambitious projects.

As a conceptual and innovative art director, Red has more than 25 years experience in Europe and the US developing, implementing and designing
brand programs with special focus on consumer goods and packaging, including projects for Dove, Sprite, Organic Avenue, Pepsi Co., Starbucks and Procter & Gamble. After a serendipitous text message with a friend in 2009, the idea for Antidote Chocolate was born.

Red was soon pouring long hours into melting, measuring and mixing chocolate in the tiny kitchen of her apartment. A nine-month quest to invent a new type of chocolate followed, with the ultimate goal of making a chocolate bar that feels more like a food rather than a sweet treat. Capitalizing on cacao’s reputation as an antioxidant-packed superfood, she aimed to create a chocolate bar nutritiously dense to supply energy and stamina for people through their busy day and to be an Antidote for whatever comes in their way. She formulated and created all the flavor pairings, sourcing all ingredients and settling on cacao from Ecuador, where all Antidote Chocolate bars are manufactured
thus leaving a larger economic impact in the country of cacao origin.

Today, with their headquarters in Miami Beach and warehouse in upstate NY, Antidote comes in 16 unique flavors on their “CHOCOLATE THAT LOVES YOU BACK” bars that are loaded with cacao, low in sugar and imaginative flavor fusions using fruits, nuts, salts and spices with cacao contents ranging from 70% to 100%. Antidote is made bean-to-bar exclusively with the highest quality single estate and prized Nacional Complex cacao beans known for their fine flavor profile.

Red stays on top of the appealing brand and packaging she designed and overseas marketing, distribution and production that requires her to be in Ecuador frequently to coordinate with providers, visit the farms and oversee production.
Antidote Chocolate is carried in more than 250 select stores nationwide in the US, with further distribution in Canada and Japan. Antidote Chocolate is also available for purchase online.