Building up tolerance
The chocolatier and coffee roaster began in 2019, adding a drive-through coffee kiosk in 2022.
Zero Tolerance Coffee and Chocolate is by design a “bean to bar” chocolatier and coffee roaster in the Britton District.
Founded November 16, 2019, Maura and Roy Baker were early arrivals in the developing district in Old Britton (annexed by OKC in 1950).
Roy is Army National Guard, and his family has a long history in Oklahoma, which is how
the Bozeman, Mont., native Maura landed in Oklahoma City.
“My husband has Cherokee roots,” she said. “His family has been in Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma since before statehood. He grew up all over the country, but the family connection brought us here.”
The couple have four sons, two of whom are in the U.S. Navy, and the younger two run the drive-through coffee “kiosk” in the Owl Court development, which opened in June 2022.
“We’re using the to-go space to teach them everything about running a business,” Maura said. “It’s also convenient for people who just want to grab a coffee. Traffic can very congested closer to the railroad tracks, so that offers people a chance to order ahead and pick it up without having to get caught waiting for a train.”
She said she has always been interested in slow food and coffee, including roasting coffee beans on the stovetop “Ethiopian style” in the early 1990s. She scaled up from a home roaster to a commercial roaster manufactured by an Israeli company that allows her to roast both coffee and cacao beans in one piece of equipment.
“Sourcing with chocolate is much more difficult than coffee, because slavery is still very much part of the production of cacao,” she said. “We work with Uncommon Cacao so we know we’re getting ethically sourced beans.”
The Bakers taught themselves how to make chocolate by read- ing, watching online sources, reading chemistry books and practicing via the old trial and error method. The result is a gem of a chocolatier in the Britton District.
