ABOUT US
Hey! I’m Amarachi Clarke, founder of Lucocoa, London’s first Bean to Bar Chocolate Maker. I am a proud chocolate crusader and activist. In 2015, I began exploring my curiosity and passion for the chocolate-making process. I am wholeheartedly dedicated to making delicious chocolate while revolutionising ethical, fair, and sustainable practices within the cocoa industry.
At Lucocoa, we make our chocolate by hand, from scratch, by importing the best beans from around the world and turning them into chocolate in our factory in Bermondsey, Southeast London.
We make our chocolate by hand for several reasons.
The chocolate supply chain is broken. Child and slave labour are still prevalent on many cocoa-growing farms, which is often ignored by big producers. But not by us. We are not a chocolate company that thinks this is okay. We know and trust all our suppliers – they are our partners, and together we are kick-starting a chocolate revolution where our farmers get paid much more than Fair Trade and Rainforest Alliance standards. We are proof that this is possible.
Furthermore, we make chocolate by hand because we believe you deserve better chocolate. As the chief chocolate maker, I take my time to understand our beans. I have learnt to know when the right time and temperature to roast them is and how long to grind the beans on our stone rollers. Our chocolate takes three days to make. With the level of care we take while making chocolate, we redefine assumptions and common misconceptions of chocolate profiles. For instance, dark chocolate is bitter (ours is not), milk chocolate is too sweet (not the way we make it), and white chocolate is not chocolate (ours 100% is!). All Lucocoa Chocolate tastes different because cocoa is like wine or coffee – different regions create different flavours. Yet, most of the chocolate we eat comes from just a few massive chocolate production factories, everything from what is badged 'premium' to affordable brands. It is all being pumped out by a few massive chocolate companies who tend to burn the cocoa beans giving you that bitter taste that you may know as commercial dark chocolate. They cannot get the same taste profiles that we can by using our traditional hand-made methods.
Lastly, we do not use refined sugar at all, ever. We thought, if we make our own chocolate, let us make it so much better. So instead, we decided to use coconut sugar (it does not taste like coconut, more caramel) and lucuma, a superfood fruit from Peru. (Lucocoa = Lucuma + coconut sugar + cocoa beans, see?) Coconut sugar, whilst still a carbohydrate, does not spike your blood sugar in the same way refined sugar does. So, with Lucocoa Chocolate, you are not on a rollercoaster of sugar highs and crashes.
We believe we all deserve better. And that is why Lucocoa is never naughty, just nice.
