Keith’s retail therapy if you’re a chocoholic

A CHOCOLATE company set up during lockdown is set to open its first shop in Ashby.

Keith Tiplady launched Indulgent Chocolates in May 2020, originally as a hobby.

Now he is opening his first shop and it will be launched later this month in Bath Street, Ashby, selling a range of chocolate creations.

According to Keith, he was trying to make use of a chocolate tempering machine he had bought his wife to help with her home baking business. A month later, the father-oftwo was made redundant from his role as a program manager at Triumph motorcycles, offering the perfect opportunity to ramp up the business to ensure he could pay the bills, along with his wife, who works for the NHS.

Keith decided to focus on tempered Belgian chocolate slabs, which are available in different sizes, with fillings such as caramel, cookie dough, peanut butter, flavoured ganache or Biscoff spread, and a large range of toppings.

Orders were initially taken over Facebook and Instagram, before the Indulgent Chocolates website was launched late last year.

Keith said: “I was able to secure a contract for 3,030 tempered Belgian chocolate slabs for a corporate client, Leonard Cheshire, who wanted to give their staff gifts to say thank you for their hard work that year. This enabled me to upgrade to a much larger tempering machine (7kg capacity vs 0.9kg).

“Part-way through completing the large order, I was featured on BBC News and received 200 orders in just a couple of hours.

“Between then and the day before Christmas Eve I worked seven days a week to complete all the orders in time for Christmas, with the help of my wife, who was also working fulltime for the NHS. In the last two days before the final postage deadline I was awake for

46 hours straight ensuring that I was able to have the final orders packaged in time.” The business has grown rapidly over the past few months and Keith says he needs more space to prepare and store the chocolates.

He said: “Instead of renting premises to prepare the chocolates, opening a shop to make and sell them in seemed far more exciting. I also felt that if Indulgent Chocolates was going to not only allow me to contribute to the bills but instead give me an income similar to my previous role, I needed to take the business to the next level. “Opening an Indulgent Chocolates shop filled with chocolate products, not just chocolate slabs, appealed to me and I hope will appeal to chocoholics near and far.”

He added that Ashby had a thriving high street, with an array of shops visited by both locals and people from surrounding areas.

I was featured on BBC News and received 200 orders in just a couple of hours.

Keith Tiplady