Oakland Zoo unveils a chocolate bar full of what grizzly bears love to eat

Ever want to eat like a grizzly bear? Then you might want to try the Grizzly Berry Bar, a just-released chocolate endorsed by the Oakland Zoo that replicates the historical diet of California grizzlies.

The sweet treat is a small-batch collaboration between the zoo and TCHO Chocolate, which handed out samples at its Berkeley factory this Wednesday to media and zoo folks. It’s being sold on TCHO’s website and also at the Oakland Zoo, with 10 percent of the proceeds supporting the zoo’s exhibit of rescue bears.

“Gone are the days of pink popcorn and things our grandparents would expect when coming to the zoo,” said the zoo’s CEO Nik Dehejia. “We now have a much more elevated food program.”

You won’t find wild grizzlies in California anymore, thanks to us pesky humans. But when they did roam the land, they loved to eat berries – thus the dark chocolate’s inclusion of freeze-dried, Pacific Northwest blackberries and blueberries. And if you actually munch on one while at the zoo, it’s possible one of the bears sticking its nose into the wind might be vicariously enjoying it, too.

“Bears can actually smell when fruit is ripe,” notes an Oakland zookeeper in a video promo for the bar. “They’re going to be able to smell it a couple of miles away. So they’re going to travel to that bush and spend all day eating those berries and getting all those calories.”

Another way to sample the grizzly chocolate is by taking a tour of the TCHO factory, which is offered to the public for $15 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. They’re doing interesting things over there. A chocolate maker on Wednesday described their next local collab, with Fieldwork Brewing, that will mix chocolate with essence of hops and (to recreate the effervescence of beer) pop rocks.