Tasting success
Bean-to-bar craft chocolate company OCHO is about to get a whole lot bigger.
The impending closure of Dunedin’s Cadbury factory has been the catalyst for boutique bean-to-bar producer OCHO (Otago Chocolate Co) to expand its operations.
A crowdfunding campaign in 2017 saw OCHO raise $2 million in just 32 hours and gain 3570 shareholders.
The turn of events, which occurred at Jack-and-the-Beanstalk speed, is something founder Liz Rowe could not have predicted when she began selling her craft chocolate at the Otago Farmers Market in 2013.
When Rowe read in the Otago Daily Times that Dunedin city councillor Jim O’Malley was proposing Dunedin start its own chocolate factory, she thought, “I’d better talk to this chap because we already have a chocolate factory in Dunedin – it’s small, but it’s here”.
At a meeting over an OCHO hot chocolate at the company’s Vogel St café and boutique factory (which currently employs five people), a grand plan to grow the company was born, with shared values such as locally made and high quality front and centre.
The first focus is on increasing production and opening a bigger factory in Dunedin’s Steamer Basin. The long-term vision is to develop a tourism component with a factory tour and chocolate tastings, and develop export markets. An immediate benefit to shareholders is that they will receive a discount on their OCHO purchases for life – a definite sweetener. “New equipment and a larger facility will enable us to expand our production from 90kgs of chocolate a week to up to 200kgs a day,” says Rowe. At the bustling Vogel St premises, locals line up for a special hot chocolate fix. Choices include PNG 70%, Smokey H+K (horopito and kawakawa), PNG 88%, Mex Style Chilli, and Solomons 100% – not to mention, Cocoa Flake Tea. “Our hot chocolates are made with our whole chocolate just ground up so it’s literally melted chocolate,” Rowe explains. The bonus is that drinking a melted 70 to 100 per cent cocoa chocolate bar is that you know what you’re getting. Rowe sources her beans from small cocoa farmers in Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Samoa. The beans are sorted, then roasted before being ground and made into chocolate (the other main ingredient added is sugar). Each bar OCHO produces is also single origin because “we like the flavour differences – we’re looking to bring out the flavour and showcase what the beans have to offer from where they have come from”, explains Rowe. OCHO has doubled its production year on year and due to the company’s recent growth spurt, Rowe is already on the case to her suppliers. “I’ve told the people in PNG that I’m going to be wanting a lot more beans!”