The Sweet Story of Rye Chocolate

We meet Paulina and Toby in their pretty chocolate  shop, on the High Street in Rye.

“Walking through our story now and looking back, chocolate is magic, it is a beautiful business to be in with our friends, in the town that we love. All our chocolate we make in Rye, we have a flavour for every person and every occasion.”  

Toby.

The Rye Chocolate production line.

What are your backgrounds, and how did you become the owners of a chocolate brand?

Toby.   Paulina’s from Kraków in Poland, and I’m from Hastings and Rye; I have lived in this area all my life. I work full time at a local independent school. I was a student there; after I graduated I went away for a little while, then came back and then I’ve been working and studying there for 17 years. 

At the same time, we’ve built up the shop in Rye,  Rye Chocolates, and in Hasting’s old town; we have  Only Coco Chocolates. Paulina and I met through the school; eight years ago. We got chatting and went on some dates. Then, maybe a year later, after going back and forth to Poland, Paulina moved to England, that was seven years ago.

Paulina. I studied full-time law, and part-time international relations in Poland for five years. I wanted to be a judge in Poland like my dad. In my family, there are many lawyers, so I felt that is the way I would go; I would follow them, until I met Toby.

One day, a few months after moving here, I noticed there was no chocolate shop in Rye. In Kraków, where I lived and studied in Poland, my apartment was above a chocolate shop, where my best friend and I would buy lots of chocolate; it stayed open until 11 pm. This inspired us to recreate my university chocolate passion in Rye.

Many people enjoy eating chocolate; how did you jump from consumer to chocolatiers?

Toby.   It was a very long journey, full of long nights. We started by retailing other people’s chocolate; the Rye shop was smaller initially than we expanded into the neighbouring shop. We quickly realised that people love chocolate in Rye.

Paulina.   Customers started asking, do you make the chocolate? So I thought, why don’t we make our own branded bars? 

Toby.   We approached our favourite stockist at the time, who was also relatively new to the business themselves. On a whim we asked, do you have an old machine that we could buy from you? We want to try it out for ourselves. They had a broken machine. So we drove over to the Welsh valleys to find this machine, when we got there, we quickly realised it wouldn’t fit in the car. Still, we agreed to buy it, and they shipped it to us, and somehow we managed to fix it. We named it Lucy after the lady who helped us get it. Lucy is still in production; she sits on the side; she is our backup if our main set ever fails. 

For the first few months, we would work through the night in the kitchen of a friend’s business in Rye. We were learning as we went along, working out what works and what doesn’t. We started with a range of five or six bars in the beginning. I think the first few bars were Peanut Butter, Salted Caramel, Fig, which we have kept on. So we were making bars through the night and then cleaning up and packing up before the morning. So we quickly realised that we wanted to do production full time, so we moved the chocolate factory to our house, it was still a little space on the side, which we turned into a proper kitchen. In August 2021, we moved the entire setup to Rye Harbour to a dedicated brand new production unit on a new complex. It is a thousand square feet with a dedicated chocolate kitchen, warehouse storage area, commercial walk-in fridge, etc. So it’s been a fun process.

We have a small team of about ten people, including some friends; it’s lovely to be able to build up the business with our friends. We have a lovely lady called Katy who is our full-time production manager; I grew up with her. 

Rye Chocolate has been in Rye for six years now, and Only Coco Chocolates for three in Hastings, we are building up trade partners and collaborations. For example, Katie from The George approached us about creating a bar of chocolate for the hotel. We used to go to The George maybe three times a week; it’s our favourite place in Rye, so we are happy they are open again. 

We worked with Katie from The George in Rye to create a sea salt flavour, milk chocolate bar, a homage to the area, and it is 43.5% cacao, from Venezuela. We have bought in custom moulds from Belgium, especially for The George, they are a new size for us.

At the moment, Paulina’s favourite is the hazelnut praline, and Toby’s has always been the peanut butter.

How do you start working on a new flavour, and what is the testing process?

Toby.   All our chocolate is handmade by us, sustainably sourced and single-origin; meaning the chocolate comes from a specific area around the world. We now have roughly 40 flavours, and some of them are seasonal. So, for example, at Easter, we have a Hot-Cross Bun bar, Carrot Cake and Rosemary & Sea Salt, which are more for the Easter ranges. And then, as we come into the summer, they’ll be mostly phased out as we introduce more summer flavours like Eton Mess,  Mojito, Peach Bellini, Hazelnut Latte, Lemon Meringue & Mango. We have to develop the next season’s chocolates well in advance, so as Spring ends, we might be thinking about other plans for the following Christmas range.

We have four base chocolates, the white chocolate, which is a 32% cacao from the Dominican Republic. The milk chocolate is 43.5% from Venezuela. A medium-dark 64% from Peru and the very dark 72% from Ecuador. Then we take the base chocolate and add different flavours, something seasonal, or maybe the taste is relevant to the collaboration. For example, Hasting’s 1066 Gin bar has a gin and tonic centre. We think, what could work now? What do we like? What have people asked for? Often people come in to ask for a flavour; the other day, a customer asked for a strawberry black pepper bar, so we’ve made it. 

We sit down with maybe five different bowls of chocolate, and we’ll play with the quantities of ingredients to see which works best. And then we have a test group of our friends who love chocolate. They come along, and they try it, and we get their honest feedback. From there, we do the design of the wrapper and finally put it up on the shelves. It is quite a straightforward process because we control the whole thing. We’re not waiting for someone to design something; we’re not waiting for someone to make something for us. We do it all inside Rye; it is incredible how quickly we can turn it around.  Chocolate is such a beautiful magic thing to make.

We have a now long-standing collaboration with a tea company based in Brighton called  Bird & Blend Tea Co.; we make a Matcha, an Earl Grey, Eton Mess and a few more flavours with them. They have 14 shops in England and a significant online presence. They send us their tea, and we develop a bar for them. We stock the bars in our shops, and they sell them through all of their shops.

Paulina.  We produce between 500 and 600 bars per day, five days a week and maybe six days around Christmas. They go into our shops, online sales and out to trade. Some of our trade stockists include, The Conran Shop in London and Paris, The British Library and lots of independent stores in the UK & abroad. There is not that much back stock, but enough that I can breathe. Now that we have our production unit, we have the storage facilities.

The one thing I can bake is brownies; apparently, they are delicious; we have regular customers coming in every day to get one, and I make all the different flavours, such as cherry, peanut butter, pistachio etc. We also created the Brownie Bake Kit so people can make their own brownies at home; they can decide if they want to add ingredients to the mix, like peanut butter, sea salt, whatever they like! Especially fun for kids and adult alike.

Three years ago, we decided to expand into Hastings; we found a shop in the old town, on George Street, that we took on and luckily managed to set it up and open just in time for Easter. The name of that shop is  Only Coco Chocolates, and we plan to expand that brand and hopefully open more shops.  Only Coco Chocolates  as a name helps explain it’s pure; there are no chemicals or additives. It is good for you, and we are focusing on quality chocolate; it is the same product as  Rye Chocolates. The difference between the two shops is that Hastings has a hot chocolate wall, where people can get their favourite chocolate bar in hot chocolate form.

What are your plans for the future?

Toby.   We are working on, bean to bar. We want to go to the cacao plantations around the world. Visit different farms, meet the farmers and bring the beans directly. So we will continue making our chocolates from cacao from other countries, including the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Peru, and Ecuador. Now we would like to vary estates within those countries, as well. So we go to one farm and make a particular variety of chocolate bars just from that farm. So our offer will be even more niche; there is so much to explore (such as cacao variety, roasting times, techniques and even attitudes).  We also plan to enhance our range of chocolate truffles, hot chocolates and chocolate buttons. In addition we are developing a special selection of chocolate bars suitable for vegans and people with dietary requirements.

Plus a couple new shops (an international expansion) is on the cards.

Rye Chocolates
110a High Street, TN31 7JE
www.ryechocolates.co.uk
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Only Coco Chocolates
20 George Street, TN34 3EG
www.only-coco.co.uk
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