Cocoa Runners Craft Chocolate Fair

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.

With a background training as a professional chef and working as a chocolatier in London, founder James was inspired by the bean-to-bar movement and decided to start his own chocolate business, focusing on flavour, texture and savouring.

Contour Chocolate use fine flavour heirloom cocoa beans from the Ingemann cooperative in Nicaragua, who work with more than 1000 producers to create sustainable cocoa; providing farmers with training and technical support along the way. Once harvested, Ingemann collects all the beans and carries out the fermentation and drying process in a centralised location to ensure a consistent, quality product each time.

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.