Woosh! Just like that, the end of 2017 is nearly upon us – we can’t quite believe how fast this year has gone! We’ve managed to squeeze so much goodness in to the past 12 months that it was quite a task to narrow our best bits down into one blog post. Here are just some of our favourite moments from the past year – 2017, you’ve been ‘ansome my bewtey!
CHANCES TO WIN
We love to spread chocolatey joy and we love giving our chocoholic Facebook followers plenty of opportunities to win the good stuff!
We started 2017 by banishing the Blue Monday blues (that awful Monday between Christmas and payday which is officially dubbed ‘the most depressing day of the year’) by giving away a ginormous chocolate bar. We ran Valentine’s giveaways, chances to win full blown chocolate hampers, not to mention our enormous Easter egg prize alongside Darts Farm for Hospiscare.
There was a chocolatey Mother’s Day competition with Turtle Tots, our ‘box a day’ competition, our #CHOCTOBER promo during October half term, plus ticket giveaways to the Royal Cornwall Show and the Cornwall Comedy Festival earlier in the year! Giving our social media followers the chance to win chocolate gives us the warm and fuzzies.
GWELLA’S KITCHEN
One thing that was sure to bring a smile to our year was ‘Gwella’s Kitchen.’ The giggling duo of two little monsters (Gwen, the daughter of our Directors Andy and Nic, and her best mate Ella) were let loose in our kitchen to make their own recipe video clips. If you haven’t seen them yet, take a look here – we challenge you not to LOL.
NEW ADDITIONS
When it comes to experimenting with new flavours we just can’t help ourselves – it’s what we do best. So, after hours in our kitchens churning out magical new flavour combinations, we settled on the selection of Toffee Apple, Bakewell Tart and a limited edition of Blonde to add to our range and set taste buds tingling in 2017.
That’s not all that was new. We adopted some more beautifully nostalgic Cornish images by Becky Bettesworth. The designs were so popular our customers framed them, stuck them to their fridge and even used them as book marks throughout the year. Delicious and useful! #winwin
EXHIBITING AT THE ROYAL CORNWALL SHOW
We always love attending trade shows and meeting other Cornish food producers (any excuse to sample their yummy tasters!). At this year’s RCS, we even had a royal visitor! What do you think our MD Alex and Prince Edward were nattering about?
NEW WEBSITE
Over the past few years, we’ve progressed from a small-scale family business to become the go-to company for Cornish chocolate. We wanted a website that looked as positive as we feel and we have to say, it looks so good you can almost taste it! When the website was launched at the end of August we also made it even easier to restock the kitchen cupboard with the introduction our brand new online chocolate shop.
THE SEARCH FOR THE CHOCOLATIER’S APPRENTICE
The internet went into meltdown in September when we created the ultimate dream job and launched the search for our first ever taste tester!
After all, who wouldn’t want to eat chocolate and call it ‘work?’ After trawling through an endless list of applicants, we chose our lucky chocolate lover in November. Hayley was the successful chocoholic and is now busy working as our Chocolatier’s Apprentice! You can find out more about her and her journey with us so far here.
MAKING THE SHORTLIST
In November, we were shortlisted for the Family Business of the Year Award at the Western Morning News Business Awards 2017. We made the list as one of the top three family businesses in the whole of Cornwall – a real honour and a super exciting experience for us! We’ve been a family business since day one and we really do appreciate every single one of our employees, so being recognised under this category made us feel extra proud.
SUSTAINABILITY IN THE IVORY COAST
Our Operations Director Andy jetted off to Africa at the end of November on a chocolate mission to learn more about sourcing operations and sustainable harvesting. We love being a part of the Cocoa Horizons™ initiative, a a three pronged approach to driving positive change in cocoa cultivation, starting from the source.
Andy’s visit to the Ivory Coast revealed more about the sustainability programmes being implemented there. He said it was fascinating learning about how to support and make sure cocoa cultivation in Africa goes from strength to strength – stay tuned for a video about his experience!
SPONSORING THE PADSTOW CHRISTMAS FESTIVAL
It’s not Christmas until Padstow says so! We were super proud to be a sponsor of this year’s event – it was the tenth anniversary of the festival so it was brighter and more twinkly than ever before!
The quayside came alive with the very best of Cornish artisan food and drink, cookery demonstrations and arts & crafts stalls on offer and really put us in the Christmas spirit.
There are so many more ‘best bits’ we could mention but after a whirlwind round up of our highlights reel, all that’s left to do is thank our incredibly hardworking staff and chocolatier’s for creating all our delicious, handmade chocolate goodies and to thank you, our chocolate-loving heroes, for all your support over the year.
If our 2017 is anything to go by, 2018 is set to be our best year yet! Here’s wishing all you chocolate fans out there a very Merry Christmas and a Happy (and chocolatey) New Year.
