Luxury Chocolate with Pump Street Chocolate

Why spend £7 on a bar of chocolate when you could buy a bar for less than half that price in your local supermarket – even one that appears top of the range and promises luxury and indulgence with seductive marketing and deluxe packaging? Not all chocolate is created equal, and it turns out that craft chocolate and commodity chocolate are worlds apart. 

Social Pantry proudly sources its chocolate from Pump Street Chocolate – a craft chocolate company producing a bean-to-bar product of exceptional quality in the village of Orford in Suffolk. Founded in 2010 by Chris Brennan and his daughter Joanna, the duo have spent years honing their craft and establishing a business that cares deeply about the provenance of their ingredients and the intricacies of their process. Pump Street Chocolate was awarded Best Producer at the Observer Food Monthly Awards 2022!

Jennifer Earle is an internationally recognised Chocolate Expert and founder of London’s first specialty food tour business, Chocolate Ecstasy Tours. Jennifer is a senior judge for the International Chocolate Awards and the Academy of Chocolate Awards and leads educational programmes all about chocolate and its wider social and environmental impact.

Social Pantry is committed to providing “luxury without excess”. This sentiment describes the value we place on offering the highest quality food, drink and events experiences for our clients underpinned by rigorous sustainability.

Social Pantry joined Pump Street Chocolate co-founder Joanna and chocolate expert Jennifer in conversation to get to the bottom of what “luxury” really means when it comes to chocolate; is it excessive to pay £7 on a bar of craft chocolate; and how we can consume chocolate in a way that offers the experience of luxury without excess? Here’s what they had to say on the topic… 

Joanna:        I think in our fast-paced lives, luxury is more about time and pleasure than it is about spending or low attainability. Allowing ourselves moments of thoughtful indulgence, whether that is using a favourite bath oil in a long soak or taking time with a friend for a coffee and cake at a favourite café, can be more indulgent and leave a more lasting impact on our wellbeing than consuming a bottle of champagne or going to a five-star hotel. And I think now that we are all more aware of the environmental impacts of our choices, excess in terms of waste is something we all try to avoid. 

Jennifer:      I’d describe “luxury without excess” as something which feels indulgent and satisfying to you, where the purpose of purchasing it is not to show to other people you have money. And also something that feels brilliant to you but doesn’t cause harm to anyone or anything else. Foie gras feels a bit like excessive luxury under this definition.

Joanna:        Quality in chocolate is very hard for the consumer to measure as there are almost no universal markers to go by – there is no standardised star rating for instance, as with hotels. It’s more like with wine, if we want to buy good wine, we have to learn over time how to read labels to understand what goes into the bottle (or bar), and to learn about terminology. 

Jennifer:      Mass market retailers would like you to believe they create “luxury” chocolate, and for some people – I know I was once one of them – the most expensive in their range was luxury. For most people, craft chocolate – the kind made by independent makers – is a luxury as it tends to be at least twice the price of the most expensive chocolate in the supermarket. 

Jennifer:      Craft chocolate is so much more expensive because it’s made with better cocoa beans that are grown and harvested and processed by farmers who are paid an appropriate amount for the quality of the beans and which allows them to live with a greater quality of life than the farmers whom most big manufacturers (and some small manufacturers) purchase their beans from. That’s true luxury, where you can enjoy knowing that no one else is suffering for your enjoyment. Craft chocolate – when it’s done well – also tastes so much better than the most expensive supermarket chocolate. The processes that make craft chocolate taste more nuanced and less bitter are labour intensive so it does cost more to produce.

Joanna:        Our view at Pump Street is that traceability to the farm level (and by this we mean having full knowledge of which farm our beans come from) is one of the most special things about our chocolate as only a tiny fraction of the chocolate in the world is made this way. The dedication required on the part of the maker to provide this level of traceability goes hand in hand with a more rigorous approach to sustainability and ethics. This attention to detail is itself a labour intensive process, and actually incurs further costs by placing a higher value on people’s work and providing pay that reflects this, therefore the product on the shelf ends up being more expensive. However even the highest standard chocolate bar can still be purchased for under £10 which is much more attainable than the heights of the best wines.

Joanna:        At Pump Street we are both Bakers and Chocolate makers, dedicated to making directly-traded single farm chocolate, and using our baked goods to create innovative new bars. All our products are labelled on the front with not only the country of origin but also the region and the farm name. This means that our customers have access to our commitment to traceability and benefit from the breadth of the flavours that are available in chocolate of different varieties and from different regions. Some of our customers are dedicated milk chocolate lovers, or people who are drawn by our Sourdough and Sea Salt bar, and others are craft chocolate connoisseurs who approach tasting dark bars as others might fine whisky. We want to make chocolate that is exciting, indulgent and satisfying. 

Jennifer:      A big part of the reason I started Chocolate Ecstasy Tours in 2005 was to help demystify the luxury chocolate market. I wanted the fancy boutiques to feel less intimidating for people and for people to understand why good quality and ethical chocolate costs more and is worth paying for, and also help people tell the difference between what was luxury branding and what was luxury product. Sadly the two aren’t equivalent!

Jennifer:      I think the biggest challenge that the better quality chocolate companies face is this: Unlike coffee and wine, most of us started consuming chocolate as children. To appeal to children the cocoa was diluted by a lot of sugar, milk and flavourings. Things we eat as children – especially if they’re identified to us as a treat – shape our tastes and our expectations. Even people who grow up and start to enjoy dark chocolate as well, will still often have a soft spot for chocolate confectionery (the mass produced commodity). 

Joanna:        I think some of the issues that consumers are becoming aware of with commodity chocolate stem from the lack of traceability of their supply chain, and also the addition of other ingredients to make chocolate more cheaply. Traceability in the supply of cocoa beans is important for understanding of labour practices at origin and for quality. Without it, when purchasing beans via a multi-layer system of middlemen, there is little knowledge of where the beans originally came from, and little incentive for the farmer to invest time or energy in delivering the best quality or adhering to any protocols. The worst abuses of this system involve child and/or forced labour, and unfortunately big chocolate companies have been very slow-moving in their efforts to deal with these issues. The second point, about ingredients, is also not often talked about; commodity milk chocolate can have very low percentages of anything that comes from cacao; and can have added fats such as palm oil. Chocolate that has nothing more than cocoa beans, cocoa butter, sugar and/or milk is much more expensive to produce.

Joanna:        What sets us apart from the massive volumes and profit-driven, impersonal scale of commodity chocolate, starts with how we choose our beans and ends with how we choose our retailers. We work with farmers we know and can communicate with (sometimes via an intermediary if we don’t speak their language). In setting up these relationships, we learn about how they run their farm (low intervention is key), the varieties they are growing, their yield, their labour practices, and we look to form a long-standing reciprocal relationship with them. Then we ship their beans to us by sea freight, to reduce emissions. We make our chocolate in small batches, with most around 30kg and maximum size of 100kg, and we trace beans from the shipment that comes to us all the way through to the finished bar. We taste and carefully calibrate our batches as we make them in order to ensure the flavour is at its best, and then we age the chocolate on site to stabilise it before it is packed in plastic-free packaging to be sent to the consumer. All of these points of difference make the chocolate more expensive, and we feel it’s important to make the complexity of our story available to our customers, so we either sell directly or via wholesale partners with whom we work really closely to give them full knowledge of what we do and how we are different. These tend to be smaller independent stores, and we are proud to support this network of shops, who are committed to their teams as we are to ours and the farmers we work with are with theirs, and are part of people-centred, local economies around the country.

Jennifer:      In short, no. But I totally understand why people might think it would be when you compare it to what supermarket chocolate confectionery is sold at. Next to buying a bar in a supermarket for £1, £7 for a similarly or smaller-sized bar can feel outrageous, but it’s important to think that the £1 chocolate has a lot less cocoa in it, it’s able to be priced that way because of corporate greed, advantage and exploitation, and it probably has fillers in it that aren’t as expensive (vegetable fats, for example).  

Joanna:        I acknowledge that it’s not accessible to regularly spend £7 on a bar of chocolate. But knowing how much work goes into making that chocolate bar, from the farmer, to what happens in our factory, and the realities of the retailer’s situation, I know the £6.75 we charge is not excessive. My hope is that as people try chocolate that is able to offer them more – more knowledge, more flavour, better quality, more unique inclusions – they will choose to buy better, and perhaps less frequently.

Jennifer:      I think a lot of your perception of that price depends on perspective. What else could you compare it to? You can make a home brand instant coffee for about 5p a mug, or you can go to an artisan coffee shop and pay £3.50 for a flat white (at least that much in London, £4.50 if you want it decaf and non dairy!). As well as enjoying it more than a £1 bar, I’d enjoy half a bar of £7 chocolate more and for longer than a £3.50 coffee and I’d enjoy two £7 bars far more and for longer than the time it might take me to drink a £14 cocktail.  

Jennifer:      Great question! If it’s a multinational brand you recognise then definitely pass over those. Beyond that I’d check their ingredients don’t include things you don’t recognise or seem like cheap fillers: like palm oil or other vegetable oils, and then finally try to visit their website. If they have great traceability and sustainability built into their business, they will be shouting about it. Fair trade does not count as either of those things. Fair trade is fine, but it’s not even close to what the truly ethical and sustainable companies are doing.

Jennifer:      I love giving people experiences as presents. With physical things there’s an issue of taste and space and an obligation to keep it potentially cluttering your home if it’s not something you love. But who doesn’t love chocolate? Giving people chocolate to eat right away is great and also giving people the knowledge of enjoying time in the future eating chocolate is even better. I think the tours are particularly special to give if you’re planning to attend with the person, or as a whole family or group of friends, it’s a signal you want to spend time with them which is the most valuable thing you can give.

Joanna:        I think the joy of gifting gets back to what we said about luxury – it’s about thought and time, finding special treats, and indulging friends and family, but with awareness of the impact of what we are buying. For personal gifting, I like to choose something from a range of chocolates – thinking about what they would like, and telling them why I chose it for them specifically. I think that is a really lovely gift, and for the recipient the thought that goes into it is more important than the cost (which can be very affordable when compared to other gifts). Also with plastic-free packaging and a long shelf life, there is little waste created and the opportunity to savour the gift over time. 

Joanna:        We make a range of special seasonal Bakery Series bars, such as our Panettone bar, and our Ecuador Dark Milk 60% Father Christmas figures.These make a very festive gift and are a chance to give something really unique, with a story behind it, and to also demonstrate support for small ethical business. We find these are really popular as hostess gifts and corporate gifts. We like to do everything we can to support, and we offer special Christmas bundles, hand-wrapped, and locally printed Letterpress cards so that gifts can be personalised and that, even when away from Pump Street’s bricks and mortar locations, recipients can feel the impact of our dedication to our customers having the best experience.

Joanna:        We are proud to have a very low-waste system. We have about 1-3% wastage of cocoa beans as we sort them; these go into food waste, along with some of the cocoa husk, although we do have some partners that take this and are beginning to work with others who might take more. On the whole our chocolate production absorbs a lot more waste than it produces, as we reuse our unsold bread and pastry scraps to make Sourdough and Sea Salt, Eccles and Croissant bars, for instance, and we bear this in mind as we create new products so that we can build them into a more closed-loop type approach.

Jennifer:      Here are some ideas based on what I have seen other cocoa farmers and chocolate makers do!

• The outer pods can be broken down and blended with paper for recycling into pretty paper for gifts or notebooks. 
• In some varieties of cocoa there is more fruit in the pod than is needed to ferment the seeds (cocoa beans), this is now being turned into drinks and also dried into a sugar alternative and used in chocolate bars. 
• The husks or shells of the cocoa bean are most commonly used for garden mulch as they’re so high in nutrients. Some companies infuse them in water to make a drink or sell them bagged with cocoa nibs for people to make their own “tea” at home.
• Chocolate companies may have chocolate leftover from scraping bars so they are level and neat, but this can usually be put back into the system so there’s no waste.
• Anything with a short shelf life or not quite perfect can usually be sold more cheaply or broken down and made into another product – like a brownie!