This isn’t a “coffee is bad, quit it” article. We like coffee. Plenty of people at our café drink both. But if your relationship with coffee has tipped into “I need three to feel human and I crash at 3pm”, swapping your morning cup for cacao a few days a week is one of the gentler experiments you can run on yourself. Here’s what actually happens when you do.

Cacao vs coffee: the quick comparison

The molecule-level version of this comparison lives in coffee caffeine vs cacao theobromine if you want the nerdy detail.

Wait, does cacao have caffeine?

A bit, yes. But far less than coffee: a ceremonial cup is roughly in tea territory. The bulk of cacao’s lift comes from theobromine, which is the same family as caffeine but acts more like a long, even nudge than a jolt. That’s the whole reason it feels different. If you want the full picture of what’s in the cup, we wrote does ceremonial cacao make you high.

What the first week of swapping usually feels like

• Days 1-3: If you’re a heavy coffee drinker, expect a mild caffeine-withdrawal grumble: a slow start, maybe a dull headache, slightly foggy. This is your old habit, not the cacao. Drink water, be patient.
• Days 3-5: The fog lifts. People often notice their energy is flatter in a good way: no 11am peak, no 3pm hole, just… level. Sleep frequently gets better, which compounds everything else.
• Week 2 onward: Most people land somewhere honest: “I don’t miss the coffee as much as I thought, but I’ll still have one when I actually want it.” Which is, frankly, a healthier relationship with both.

Note: this isn’t medical advice and everyone’s different. If you’re very caffeine-sensitive, on heart medication, or pregnant, keep portions small and check our notes in how much ceremonial cacao you should drink.

How to actually make the swap

1. Don’t go cold turkey on day one unless you enjoy headaches. Replace one coffee with a cacao for a few days, then more.
2. Use real cacao. A teaspoon of supermarket cocoa in hot water will not do this. Whole-bean ceremonial cacao will. If you’re unsure what the difference is, here’s cacao vs cocoa. We grind ours from whole beans in Amsterdam.
3. Make it properly. 15-25 g cacao for a morning cup (more if you want a full ceremonial start to the day), melted into a splash of hot water, topped with hot water or oat milk, whisked or shaken until velvety, a pinch of cinnamon, a little sweetener if you like.
4. Give it the two minutes coffee never gets. This is where cacao quietly wins: it rewards slowing down. Sit, sip, look out the window. A lot of the “calm focus” people credit to cacao is also just… not gulping a drink while answering emails.
5. Stack it with something. Five minutes of journaling, a short meditation, a stretch. Cacao makes that window feel a little more spacious. We dug into why in why pure cacao boosts creativity.

A simple “instead of coffee” cacao

• 15-25 g ceremonial cacao
• 180-220 ml hot water, or half water / half oat milk for a creamier cup
• Pinch of cinnamon, optional pinch of sea salt
• Optional: 1 tsp maple or honey, or a date blended in

Melt the cacao into a little of the hot liquid, top up, whisk or shake until smooth and frothy, and drink it like you mean it.

The honest verdict

Cacao won’t replace coffee for everyone, and it doesn’t need to. But if you want energy without the rollercoaster, a morning that feels like a moment instead of a refuel, and a drink that gives a little back to your body while it wakes you up, it’s a genuinely lovely swap, even just two or three days a week.

Want to try it for a fortnight? A 250g bag covers a couple of weeks of morning cups, the starter kit gives you the shaker and the cacao together, and if you decide it’s a keeper, the subscription means you never run out mid-habit. Then read how to do a cacao ceremony at home for when you want the full version, not just the quick cup.