We have launched! We’ve been working hard behind the scenes for a few months now – building the website, designing the logo, deciding on packaging, and of course, sourcing great chocolate. So it was great to see it all come together for our launch this month, when we sent out our first subscription boxes!
Our inaugural subscription boxes featured four amazing bean-to-bar producers, each with chocolates that we were really proud to send out. It made sense that one of the first chocolates we would send out would be from the first bean-to-bar chocolate maker we met – Allison of Clonakilty Chocolate in Ireland. We met Allison through a friend of a friend while we were living in Ireland, and her warm, friendly, natural, fun personality really shine through in her chocolate. Next up was a chocolate from Marou, which is made by two Frenchmen living in Vietnam, and really showcases the amazing things that happen when you combine traditional chocolate making techniques with the bean-to-bar philosophy.
The third bar was from Scotland, by The Chocolate Tree. These guys are really committed to producing natural, organic and ethical chocolates that taste amazing, and the fact that their Colombian bar is particularly well matched with red wine made it a winner for us! Last, but definitely not least, our Australian bar this month was from Hunted + Gathered in Melbourne. They are a small scale operation who love experimenting with processes and flavours; if you like licorice you will love their dark chocolate with fennel! We were really delighted that our first four producers really showcased the delights of bean-to-bar chocolate.
We picked different chocolates from these four producers for each subscriber, to match the preferences they signed up with. Over time, as we learn more about our subscribers, we will be able to tailor the chocolates we send them even more. This is an exciting prospect for us, not only as lovers of chocolate, but also as people who love numbers – Chris is a statistician and Alison is an economist, so we really are the ultimate chocolate nerds!
You can read more about each of the producer’s we feature in our subscription boxes on our producer pages, and many of the bars are available for individual sale through our shop. If you have any favourite bean-to-bar chocolate producers (or know of one you’d like to try) we’d love to hear about them – get in touch by email or on social media (see links below).