Jaws and Claws
JAWS and Claws is a Sabah-based bean-to-bar chocolate producer that is the brainchild of sugar artist Josephine Lu, who started the outfit in 2018.
Lu was inspired to start her own cocoa plantation after making her own chocolate (she is a certified chocolate-taster), sourced from 100% cocoa liquor (the stage after cocoa nibs are ground).
“I thought if I am sourcing the cocoa liquor, why not make the chocolate myself? I am in Sabah and cocoa is readily available here, so it is about expanding and producing different chocolate products.
“By doing this, I can make something 100% purely from Sabah – from the cocoa to the cocoa butter, so it is very exciting to be able to do that,” she says.
Lu works with six single estate cocoa farmers in Sabah (she owns one of the farms) and provides facilities like fermentation and drying for all the farms. She says one of her biggest challenges at the beginning was getting farmers to understand her vision and what was required to make quality cocoa.
“Bean-to-bar chocolate is pretty new in Malaysia and the challenge is that farmers do not know what you are doing or what you need. They only know how to plant, harvest and ferment to their standards. But as a chocolate-maker, we need more than that.
“So it took me two years of working on the farms with them and going back and forth and doing research and development before I even started producing a single chocolate bar. After those two years, that’s when they realised, ‘Okay, this is what you need and how I can improve cocoa production,’” says Lu.
All that hard work has paid off as Jaws and Claws’ chocolate has earned accolades aplenty since its inception. In 2022, the brand scored a silver award in the International Chocolate Awards 2021/2022 Asia Pacific for its beanto-bar single estate Goshen Grove, alongside a host of other awards.
The brand has also earned recognition on the local front, having recently been awarded the Best Agricommodity Start-up of the Year 2022 by the Malaysia International Agricommodity Expo & Summit, among many others.
“For me, it’s a milestone, because it’s something I have been trying to do for so many years – to show that we actually produce cocoa of such quality and we are as good as what others have sold overseas,” says Lu.
Moving forward, Lu is looking at investing in more machinery for her chocolate production and will also be furthering her education as a chocolate taster.
She says the rewards of what she does is in seeing people enjoying Malaysian single-origin chocolate, although it is hard work putting it together.
While she believes there is room for more beanto-bar producers in Malaysia, she says newbies have to be prepared to putinthe work in order to thrive and grow.
“I am sure thereisroomfor growth for everyone but it also depends on what you are looking for as a chocolate-maker. If you want to be a chocolatier, you can buy commercial chocolate, use it and mould it.
“But if you want to be a real bean-to-bar maker, a lot of the time, it is not sexy. We are up at the farm heaving sacks of dry beans or doing the fermentation. Our hands might be dipped into smelly wet beans – it is dirty, sweaty and hot – basically not glamorous at all.
“So if someone really wants to do this, why not? I would salute those who really go hands-on into this and involve themselves in the entire chocolate-making process. Because you really need to have passion to do this,” she says, laughing.
In conjunction with World Cocoa and Chocolate Day, look out for an interactive version of this story on The Star Online. The second part of our series on Malaysian chocolate will be out next Sunday.