Tiny Box Spotlight: An Interview With A Chocolate Maker
The Tiny Box Spotlight is A series that shines a light on the amazing small businesses that the UK has to offer. From entrepreneurs to family-run shops, these unsung heroes are the backbone of our local communities.
So for today's spotlight, we braved the January cold and headed over to Worthing town in West Sussex to visit Audrey at Terre De Sienne, a bean-to-bar chocolate maker with a mission.
The smell is the first thing that hits us as we walked into Terre De Sienne, which is tucked away on a street behind a shopping centre, before Audrey greets us with a smile. Looking around it's certainly not what you'd expect from a chocolate factory, but instead a perfectly charming shopfront with various artworks from local artists, as well as shelves of chocolate-related and hand-crafted goodies. The walls are coated in a gorgeous sienna colour, the colour of cacao beans where the business gets its name, and in the middle sits a large refrigerated glass case full of chocolate bars, each wrapped in beautifully designed packaging.
Hello Audrey, it’s lovely to meet you finally, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself?
Yeah sure! So I am a chocolate maker, that means that I make the chocolate, from the cocoa beans that I source sustainably and ethically. At the moment I’m using beans from Guatemala, which I turn into chocolate here in Worthing.
So interesting aside, Guatemala currently has around 9,200 cacao farms producing 10,500 of the almost 5 million tons of that are produced globally each year, trailing far behind countries like Ecuador, Ghana, and Côte d'Ivoire.
So everything is done in-house? It’s not a common practice, is it?
No, not really. It started, the movement, started in the US mainly and it’s starting to grow in the UK at the moment but there are mainly chocolatiers at the moment, which are people that buy chocolate ready-made and turn it into chocolate.
So that’s the distinction between chocolatiers and chocolate makers, the “bean to bar” bit?
Yes, so I stuck to the chocolate itself, and then I could sell it to a chocolatier to make confectionary with. I was a pastry chef so I worked with chocolate a lot and I wanted to become a chocolatier, and in the research to source my ingredients, which is the chocolate, I found out that chocolate produced nowadays is not necessarily ethical or sustainable and I didn’t feel comfortable not being sure, 100%, where it came from so I decided to solve the problem by making the chocolate itself.
So it’s just yourself here, you’ve got no help, there’s no one lurking behind the scenes or anything?
No, it’s just me! From the sourcing to packaging planning. I work with a lot of artists and all the businesses to make everything possible, and I love collaboration so I’m always looking for help around.
After we had finished the interview, Audrey did mention that she had recently taken on help for a few hours a week to help pack chocolates, buying herself some extra time.
Is there something in particular that helps you keep going?
So the struggle I would say is to do everything on my own. There’s so much to think about, especially when you want to run an ethical business you need to fact-check everything you’re using so that would be my struggle, and time management, you know I never have enough hours in the day to do everything. What helps me is just looking at other businesses and talking with other business owners, and getting inspiration from the community and (others’) success.
You mentioned that the industry as a whole isn’t quite what you’d like it to be, would you mind elaborating on that a little bit?
So child labour is still an issue, even though we think that it’s gone now, and modern slavery is still a big problem. The main issue is that it’s trendy to label something as “ethical” so there’s a lot of greenwashing happening, you cannot trust the labels which is a big problem because when you’re a consumer you want to trust what you’re buying.
Did you have any kind of advice for someone wanting to follow in your footsteps, or just start a business in general?
So I started part-time which gave me time, money-wise, and as a person, to grow my business slowly and make the right decisions. So just the small things, getting the right moulds, taking the time to choose the ingredients, set up recipes gave me the time I needed to get a small range of products. From that, I tried to grow my business and eventually go full-time.
So really nice and organic, and making sure the foundations were set before you started building?
I would always try to give myself time to make mistakes because it’s part of learning, and I’d always have backup plans because there’s only so much you can plan!
I was looking for sustainable packaging because I’m plastic free, and I found you online, and I was just really happy with your offering. I started with gift boxes and then went onto the smaller ones, then I found out that you were having plastic-free ribbons which are great, so yeah I’m really happy.
Brilliant! So in terms of products that Tiny Box Company could perhaps bring to the table, for you, is there anything you’d like to see from us in the near future or are you pretty happy with what’s going on?
So I’m actually pretty happy with what you’re offering! They work perfectly for my small chocolates. It actually fits all my 9 flavours inside so that’s perfect, as for the larger box I can put up to 14 bars so that’s more than enough for me.
If you're interested in purchasing some extraordinarily good quality chocolate, all of us in the Tiny Box Company marketing team can recommend TDS. In particular, I can personally recommend the 65% dark chocolate bar "Bleu de Cobalt", which is beautifully rich without being sickly, and fruity in flavour, rather than the often bitter taste that often comes with dark chocolate.