About Us
Chocolarder is a small, ethical bean-to-bar craft chocolate maker based in Cornwall.
We are one of a handful of bean-to-bar chocolate makers in the UK, and the only one based in Cornwall. Everything that comes out of our factory is made with only the best ingredients, sourced locally where possible, in the seaside town of Falmouth.
Founded in 2012, Chocolarder started as the passion project of Mike Longman, a former pastry chef. During his time running a pastry kitchen at a local restaurant here in Cornwall, Mike was passionate about the kitchen’s ethos of sourcing the best ingredients and doing so locally whenever he could—but that got him thinking about chocolate. It was a technical area that he really enjoyed working in, but there was no such thing as locally-made chocolate in Cornwall. That’s when Mike started to think: What could I do to change that?
It was Mike’s commitment to ethical and sustainable practices that led to Chocolarder standing for more than just great flavour. Committing to zero-carbon alternatives wherever possible
Having worked in a variety of restaurants—up to one Michelin star and 5 AA Rosettes—Mike was easily able to echo the practices that he’d been focusing on during his time in a professional kitchen. In Mike’s own words: “If you’re going to put that much time and effort into making something, whether it’s pastries or chocolate, you don’t want to be using cheap, rubbish ingredients. You want to be looking for something ethical and high-quality. You want to be using the best’.
Raising the Bar
First and foremost, we make incredible chocolate of the highest possible quality.
Chocolarder also works on the principle that if we cannot be truly sustainable, we won’t do it. In practice, that means:
- Plastic free packaging on all products
- No palm oil
- No emulsifiers
- Supporting reforestation various projects around the globe
- Slavery-free ingredients sourced direct from farmers
- An obsessive commitment to keeping waste to a minimum (if you want more information about this please ask, we are only too happy to provide all of the boring details)
Our commitment to sustainable, ethical practices goes further than mitigating the harm our products cause. We are determined to be a force for good, leading the way in zero-carbon, slavery-free and compostable or recyclable materials in our sector.
In the 10 years since Chocolarder began in Mike’s kitchen, we have found that truly sustainable practices are radical. However, unlike big, established chocolate-makers, we don’t have the task of changing our entire process to undo all the harm it causes. As we grow, we will only produce and bring to market products which we know we can guarantee are truly sustainable – without compromising, and without vague, long-term goals to reduce harm. If we can’t do it ethically, we won’t do it – it’s as simple as that.
