Taste of adventure for top chocolatier
Barnsley-born chocolate maker Paul A Young surprised many people when he shut his London shops last year and moved back to Yorkshire. He tells Catherine Scott why he did it and his plans for the future. Pictures by James Hardisty.
PAUL A Young is becoming a familiar figure walking the streets of Staithes with his dachshund Billington. Young is one of the world’s top chocolatiers and until recently he had three shops in London, at Soho, Bank and Islington. Then last year he surprised many people by closing all his shops to up sticks and move back to Yorkshire.
“It was totally unplanned,” he says. “If you’d asked me a year ago if I had plans to move back to Yorkshire and the North-East I’d have said no. But that’s the beauty of life.
“There were a lot of reasons, some as a result of the pandemic and things change. I’d done it for a very long time I thoroughly loved it, but after a while doing the same thing you start to lose your creativity. And our Islington store was coming to the end of its 15-year lease and I thought, could I really do another 15 years?
“On top of that I had to move out of the house I was living in. London is the most expensive I have known it. I was turning 50. My parents still live near Durham and I had been away from them for 28 years. I wanted and needed to be closer to them. I just thought, where do I love?”
He’d been visiting Staithes for 30 years and used to live in Hinderwell and Whitby for a while in the Nineties. “I knew the area and I knew it was gorgeous.”
He also had two people he knew in Staithes, the owners of Betsy & Bo deli and sweetshop in the village.
“I messaged them and asked if they knew anyone who might be renting a property. They said as it happened the house above their shop was vacant and they asked if I was interested, I went to have a look and I thought, why not? It’s beautiful, its inspiring and it will give me the downtime I need. It’s great to be back.”
He closed the business at the end of July, moved in September, accompanied by Billington, with no plans to make chocolate at all.
“It was a very difficult decision to end something after that amount of time when you are still at the top of your profession. I had no idea what I was going to do – I had no plan – and I still don’t really. Deep inside I had