SPOTLIGHT ON LUCOCOA
Meet the face behind the brand
There’s a chocolate revolution taking place in London. It’s rewriting the rule book; turning high-quality, all-natural ingredients into small-batch bars, and Amarachi Clarke is leading the way.
Clarke, a UNICEF project managerturned-chocolate maker, established Lucocoa in 2015 after discovering a passion for the nuanced flavours found in artisanal chocolate. ‘I learned that chocolate was similar to wine and coffee – different regions in the world produce different flavoured beans. It made me question why I’m able to buy a breadth of different quality and priced coffee and wine, but when it comes to chocolate, it’s a different story,’ explains Clarke. ‘I wanted to challenge the current narrative around chocolate. The one that says dark should be bitter, milk is sweet and white isn’t chocolate at all.’
Lucocoa was started from Clarke’s spare bedroom, where she spent her evenings learning and experimenting with the craft of chocolate making. ‘I have a tech and engineering background, so the idea of testing timings and temperatures for roasting and grinding the cacao beans to achieve different flavours was really exciting me,’ she recalls.
Clarke sources the ingredients for her six signature bars from across the globe, and is passionate that they’ll never contain additives, preservatives or refined sugar. ‘I felt I couldn’t create a company that used refined sugar, as I don’t consume it in my daily life. I opted for coconut sugar and the Peruvian superfood lucuma as substitutes,’ she explains. ‘Our beans originate from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Belize, Guatemala and Ghana. The coconut sugar comes from Indonesia and our lucuma, which is a fruit, is grown at high altitudes in Peru. We stay true to these principal ingredients, which is where the name Lucocoa came from.
The brand is London’s first bean-to-bar producer, and one of only a handful in the UK, but what does bean-to-bar really mean? ‘Simply put, the cocoa bean goes through certain steps over a number of days to produce the end product. In our case, our small-batch chocolate takes three days to make,’ explains Clarke. ‘It also means that the chocolate maker has an ethical focus, paying farmers the right price for their beans, which can be up to 50% higher than Fair Trade.’
As for her favourite places to shop for independent produce, Clarke is in good company: ‘We moved into our new factory in Bermondsey in early 2020, and I’m lucky that my neighbours are fine food producers. There’s Crown & Queue, for example, which creates high-welfare cured meat inspired by the culinary history of 19th-century Britain, and the Single Variety Co, producers of seriously good chilli and fruit jams. Natural wines weren’t something I knew much about before I came to the Spa Terminus site, but I’ve also since discovered this wonderful world thanks to the amazing imports to be found at Ancestrel Wines.’