Cocoa Runners Craft Chocolate Fair 2025

After a career at IBM, international jet-setter Chris briefly retired before deciding to pioneer the making of sourdough and other breads in his idyllic countryside bakery in Orford, Suffolk. His insatiable drive to invent unquenched, though, Chris decided to begin crafting award-winning chocolate, along with his daughter Joanna, in their bakery – today, Pump Street Chocolate has fully taken over the bakery shop, café and café kitchen, while the bread is baked just a few hundred yards outside the village at Richmond Old Dairy in Gedgrave.

Despite the fact that Pump Street itself has grown and developed over the years, the same principles that guided their growth from day one continue to do so now. Pump Street prioritise supporting their cocoa farmers through a transparent, ethical, and sustainable supply chain, as well as striving to be environmentally conscious with their plastic-free compostable packaging.

Deep in the heart of Cornwall, England, a mere stone’s throw away from the coast, lies Chocolarder HQ. Founded in 2012 by Mike Longman, Chocolarder are the only bean-to-bar chocolate makers in Cornwall and source the best local ingredients from the seaside town of Falmouth whenever possible.

In addition to creating delicious bars, Chocolarder is doing its part in the craft chocolate industry with their mission to create ethically responsible and sustainable chocolate – they pride themselves on eco-friendliness by packaging their bars in plastic-free materials, making a positive impact on the planet and giving back to the hard-working cocoa farmers.

Manchester’s first bean to bar chocolate maker, Dormouse Chocolates, started producing its very first batches in Isobel’s home kitchen in December 2014. Isobel Carse, the founder of Dormouse Chocolates, started her craft chocolate journey as a professional chocolatier with a budding drive to make bean to bar chocolate. Inevitably, Dormouse Chocolates outgrew its small kitchen space and moved its operations to its own small-scale chocolate factory.

From the very beginning of their chocolate making journey, Dormouse Chocolates has stood out – in 2017, Dormouse was awarded the UK Rising Star by the Academy of Chocolate. So we are always looking forward to see what innovative bar ideas Dormouse comes up with next!

Armed with a love for dark chocolate and all its health benefits, Deanna Tilston set out on a personal journey to learn about and craft her own chocolate. What started out as a self-nourishing endeavour has ultimately ended up becoming an award-winning chocolate maker. It seems that every element of Tosier chocolate elicits reverence for cacao and chocolate, from sourcing its cacao beans to the reason behind the name.

In 2016, Deanna was forced to change her diet to avoid a gallbladder removal operation. As a long-term fan of dark chocolate, she began to craft her own chocolate to give her healthy bursts of magnesium, antioxidants and iron.

Duffy Sheardown has only been making chocolate since 2008, but his bars have quickly become renowned as some of the best in the world. In fact, just three years after starting the business, his Honduras Indio Rojo bar won the prestigious Academy Of Chocolate “Golden Bean” award for the best bean-to-bar chocolate in the world.

Duffy sources his beans directly from the growers. He is one of the founders of an organisation called Direct Cacao, aimed at promoting this kind of trade. From a cocoa farmer’s point of view, direct trade gives a much higher income than other schemes like Fair Trade, as it cuts out all the middlemen that are usually involved when cocoa is traded as a commodity.

BeanCraft was founded in 2019 by Nicky and Tom Couch, just before the pandemic hit, after Nicky went on a chocolatier course with a good friend of hers as an experience when their children were little. Based in Bradford on Avon, England, the husband-and-wife duo are a team of just two, although their two teenage children help out with the chocolate tasting – Nicky does the chocolate making, bar wrapping, and finance, whereas Tom focusses mainly on the website and the packaging.

BeanCraft’s mission is to make delicious chocolate using as few quality ingredients as possible, while doing justice to the extraordinary effort that goes into the growing the cocoa beans that they use.

Choco Del Sol was founded in 2012 by husband-and-wife duo Patrick and Peggy Walter. Founded in partnership with a local non-profit organisation in their home turf in eastern Germany, the pair bought a tiny factory and started to experiment with single origin cocoa beans.

From the start, Choco Del Sol have been exclusively pairing these beans with organic, high-quality ingredients, putting ethical and sustainable ingredients at the forefront of their chocolate-making mission. After growing in size, Choco Del Sol’s base of operations is now located in one of the most incredible places we’ve ever heard of here at Cocoa Runners – in the centre of the fairy-tale-esque Rochsburg Castle in the beautiful Mulde valley!

Mikkel Friis-Holm, a trained chef and founder of Friis-Holm, has truly made a name for himself in the world of chocolate, namely for his attention to detail and experimental style when it comes to subtle variations in chocolate making.

Friis-Holm has done a lot for craft chocolate today, but before any award-winning chocolate had been made, Mikkel’s journey started with an ever-growing passion for fine chocolate. This eventually led him to Central America, where he fully immersed himself in a project that aimed to identify and evaluate DNA strands of Nicaraguan cacao. Discovering this new profile of cacao became motivation for Mikkel to fulfil his long time interest, thus, Friis-Holm, the Danish bean-to-bar chocolate manufacturer, was born.

In 2011, Shane and Dorothy Neary organised a fundraising event for their eldest daughter’s service trip to India. Dorothy, whose family has a long history in the confectionery industry, was given an old chocolate fudge recipe by her mother, who suggested that she make some to sell at the event. It’s lucky for us that she did! It proved to be a massive hit. Within days Shane and Dorothy were invited to craft markets and asked to provide food for weddings—and so the chocolate making began.

They’ve come a long way from their early days of processing their beans with a rolling pin and hair dryer! They now craft their chocolate in a repurposed potato farm in County Down, at the base of the Mourne Mountains with a beautiful view over the Irish Sea. They have kept the family aspect of the business, too. Shane proudly told us, “We’re a family business and all of our older children have various skills that are beneficial to a chocolate making business… i.e. mechanic, carpenter, event organising, marketing, researching, visual retailing and fancy improvising when necessary.”

Lara and Cameron of Bare Bones Chocolate, based in Glasgow, Scotland, have been making a big splash in the craft chocolate world since they started producing their own micro-batch chocolate bars in 2018. Their mission statement, Cameron tells us, is simple: to make the best possible chocolate, using the finest cacao and ingredients that people really love.

Bare Bones also pride themselves on being a sustainable business, and are mindful of the footprint they create on the planet through all of their processes. To that end, their beautiful self-designed packaging is made from recycled paper coffee cups and are themselves recyclable after use. That’s really important to them, Cameron explains: “We wanted to be a little bit of a solution to an existing problem and throw-away culture”. The wrappers are made by Edinburgh-based Vegware, a company that makes new food packaging out of old food waste.

Fjåk crafts its organic, ethically traded, bean to bar chocolate in the depths of Hardangerfjord in Norway. Sourcing its cacao beans from exciting origins far, far from Norway, Fjåk is a chocolate maker that also likes to keep things close to home; it experiments with Nordic nature inclusions grown locally to the factory.

Fjåk took its name from the Hardanger dialect, where people of a certain generation in the region would refer to each other as ‘fjåk’. Roughly translating to ‘loveable’ or ‘honest’, Agur and Siv felt there was no other name better suited for their chocolate vocation. As chocolate is, after all, “the most loveable thing in the world”.

Our Chocolate Fair is being held at Fidelio Café on 91-95 Clerkenwell Rd in London.

Fidelio Café is a 6 minute walk away from Farringdon Station, making it very accessible. Farringdon Station is connected to Thameslink trains and multiple tube lines, including the Elizabeth, Hammersmith & City, Circle & Metropolitan lines. There are also multiple bus stops nearby.

Yes, the free-to-attend fair is suitable for children, as well as the chocolate tastings. However, the wine & coffee tastings are not suitable for children.

Unfortunately not – as much as we love all four-legged friends at Cocoa Runners, the event is not suitable for dogs. The space isn’t very large, and there will be samples of dark chocolate at the stalls which could cause your dog health issues if consumed.

Entrance into the chocolate fair is free, so you can browse all of the exciting chocolate and other stalls to your hearts content. But due to the popularity of previous years, we’ve now introduced free, pre-bookable tickets to guarantee you entry to the fair during your time slot without queuing. We encourage you to get your hands on the time-slotted tickets to avoid disappointment!

The talks and tastings downstairs are ticketed, so if you’re interested in attending those then make sure you buy yourself a ticket.

Yes we can! But if you have a severe allergy, please get in contact with us through [email protected] as there will be allergens present and we can’t always guarantee that there will be no cross contamination.

Yes, absolutely! There will be plenty of dark and 100% chocolate available for you to try. We can also cater the tastings and talks to vegans, but if you’re attending a tasting let us know beforehand through [email protected].

Unfortunately not. There is a small step into the café where the chocolate stalls will be, and the space inside is small so it would be hard to navigate in a wheelchair. Additionally, the talks & tastings are downstairs and are only accessible via a flight of stairs.