We’re passionate about real chocolate…
“I founded Tosier Chocolate in 2016 and launched the Tosier Chocolatemaker brand at The Aldeburgh Food & Drink Festival, Suffolk in 2017. I had lived in Europe for a number of years, on and off, and enjoyed tasting many different styles of chocolate. I became more and more interested and eventually set out to learn how to make real chocolate from the bean.
I have always loved making things by hand and my decision to learn how to make chocolate was an extension of that. It was hard work as small batch chocolate making is a kind of alchemy, it’s a tricky substance and those early days involved a lot of trial and error and beginner’s luck. My first attempts tasted good and this encouraged me on to learn more.
To improve my understanding of the theory and context of chocolate I took Ecole Chocolat’s bean-to-bar course and later a hands-on course at Cocoatown with Chloe Doutre-Roussel and Marie Fernanda Di Giacobbe in Atlanta, Georgia. This experience working directly with these two remarkable and inspirational women really ‘set the fire’ and I was determined to try and make world class chocolate. Whilst in the US I bought the additional equipment I needed and that was the point of no return!
The business has grown from my basement to a Portakabin and then on to a converted dairy during the pandemic, not the best timing but the business was ready so we made the jump!
Now we have grown into a family business something I had not foreseen when I started out on this journey.
Jonathan, my husband works on sales and marketing and Émile, our son, is a trained chef works in production alongside myself and our product range has grown from the original four bars to eight bars, (two with inclusions), dragées, pralines and Freddy Rocks!
Being a chocolate maker is stimulating, everyday brings new challenges to keep you on your toes. There are so many aspects of the business you need to keep on top off, not least of all the financial side of things that I do struggle with!
Finding our place in the market has also not been easy as I started making chocolate from a passion with no thought to real growth and how I would go about doing it. The journey has been totally organic and it is only now we have grown and become a family business that we have started to seriously look at our direction.
But in essence Tosier remains the same, we have just grown into a dedicated small-batch chocolate factory - sorting, cracking, winnowing, grinding and conching our chocolate in sixty-four kilo batches with an obsessive focus on taste and flavour.
Making on this small scale enables us to keep a close eye on every stage of the process and produce the best quality chocolate.
Provenance and traceability are really so important. Tosier is part of a transparent supply chain which ensures that farmers get a fair price and which creates a meaningful impact for cocoa-growing communities.”
Deanna Tilston, Founder and Chocolate Maker
Tosier Chocolate Ltd
