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Sussex Internship Programme
This scheme offers grant-supported, work-based training and experience to recent graduates and has been running successfully for 3 years.
We are very happy to be supporting this scheme this year and will be offering a placement at Cocoa Loco during the summer. Please click here if you would like to find out more.
Panorama - "Chocolate -The Bitter Truth"
Our cocoa comes from a co-operative in the Dominican Republic and we only work with like minded organisations who are committed to the growing and processing of cocoa with a sustainable environmental and social footprint.
We are very pleased that the BBC Panorama program has helped to raise the public's awareness of the exploitation of children in the cocoa industry. A problem in West Africa, where 70% of the worlds cocoa comes from, that is estimated to effect more than one million children.
At Cocoa Loco we believe that everyone should be treated fairly from bean to mouth and as a small business our certification with the Fairtrade Foundation helps to offer critical protections for workers and directly addresses the underlying problem of low cocoa prices and poverty amongst cocoa farmers.
The farmers and members of the Conacado co-operative abide by the key covenants of the International Labour Organization, including those forbidding inappropriate child labor, and forced labour. The Fairtrade Foundations system of traceability, which is not prevalent in the wider cocoa industry, supports the policing and enforcement of these standards.
Bad Weather, Good Times
Having a chocolate factory on a farm has its pros and cons.
After a heavy snow fall we made it into work to find there was no electicity! But Sarah knew what to do and put our chocolate buttons to good use!
Meet Our New Friends
We are really excited to announce that we have teamed up with HiPP Baby Club to offer their members exclusive offers on our tasty chocolate and baked goods.
Cocoa Loco and HiPP Baby Club both believe in eating good wholesome organic foods so we are delighted to be working together.
HiPP love Mums, Bumps and Babies! Join the HiPP Baby Club today for expert personalised information and advice from their website, emails and newsletters tailored to your stage of pregnancy or baby's age. You can also meet new friends in the helpful HiPP forums, and receive free samples and exclusive offers & competitions.
Gold Award
We are delight to have been awarded a Gold Eggsellence Award for ensuring that all of the eggs we use in our yummy baking come from happy British free range hens.
As well as being free range, the hens which lay our eggs meet the strict organic standards of the Soil Association. They are supplied by the lovely Grant, of Lee House Farm, just a few miles away.
To find out more about the Hen Welfare Trust please visit www.bhwt.org.uk.
At the Movies
Local documentary makers, Fact Not Fiction Films, are known for their thought provoking documentaries with an emphasis on humanity, the environment and issues of significant public interest.
Cocoa Loco are pleased to have provided some small support with their first feature film, 31 North 62 East. This psychological thriller, starring John Rhys-Davies, is now on release in the UK.
Charlie Cottrell has been out and about trying chocolate for Channel 4 and has compiled her list of Top 10 Chocolate Shops in the UK and our internet shop is one of them! Yippeeeee. Find out more.....
The Times / Soil Association Organic Food Hero
This year as part of the Soil Association Organic Food Awards , The Times asked you to nominate your favourite producer for a special Organic Food Hero Award.
There was a huge range of nominations from butchers to greengage growers, so your can imagine our delight when we got a call to say that we had won this prestigious award.
The team at Cocoa Loco are passionate about what we do and work hard to ensure you get great chocolatey products and excellent service. But we would never have won this award without your support. From all of us, thank you.
Like Many Things, It Shouldn't Happen But It Does.
Safepoint are a charity who work predominately in the developing world to educate and promote safe injections. A problem not widely recognised in the UK, unsafe injections from reused syringes and needles are responsible for the death of a child every twenty four seconds , with over twenty three million avoidable infections every year according to World Health Organisation figures.
As part of their work, Safepoint make dedicated short films for countries or cultural regions that spark reaction, inform and change behaviour. These films are shown on TV and at cinemas to raise awareness and their latest film is supported by the past President Dr Kalam for nationwide distribution, as part of an intensive safe injection campaign in India.
Having recently heard Marc Koska, the founder of Safepoint, talking about the horrific reality of the problem of unsafe injections across the world, we felt moved to action.
To help support Safepoint and help raise awareness we have launched a brand new organic and Fairtrade chocolate bar.
The Koska Blend - Milk Chocolate Indian Summer Bar is influenced by Safepoints work, with a balanced blend of spices in a smooth milk chocolate, invoking tastes of India.
For every bar sold we will donate fifty pence to Safepoint and we will be supporting them moving forward, so watch this space for futher news.
Fairtrade
We are delighted to announce that moving forward we are able to offer a number of our products as both Fairtrade and Organic.
At Cocoa Loco we believe quality lies in exceptional taste, care in how our products have been produced, from bean to mouth, and that the people in this chain have been treated fairly.
We are therefore proud to be able to display a mark that clearly conveys a set of values which are not only important to us, but give you confidence that some of the 50 million people worldwide who are dependant on cocoa for their livelihood have received a fair price to produce their beans in a sustainable way and have received money from a fairtrade premium that their community can democratically invest in their development.
Go On, Chicken Out
The eggs we use in our baking come from an organic flock on a farm a couple of miles away. We know that they are properly cared for and that they are happy hens, you can taste it in their eggs!
In fact, a couple of the old girls from the flock have come to live with us, making entertaining companions in the garden and they keep the slugs under control!
We are not chicken experts by any means but we know enough to know that you can't buy a chicken in a supermarket for a couple of pounds and expect it to have had a good life (and in our view taste good).
In the last decade or so there has been real consumer and industry change around egg production and 2006 was the first year to see combined sales of free range and organic eggs exceed that of caged eggs. But, there has been little or no interest in addressing the plight of the chicken bound for the table, that is until now!
The TV Chef & Writer, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, launched a campaign, under the name Chicken Out, to improve the welfare of these birds. His campaign has our full support.
Food Packaging - A hot environmental topic
Packaging and food packaging is now a hot topic and rightly so. On average a third of your household waste is packaging. With an estimated 6.3 Million tonnes of packaging entering British homes each year and with only around a third of household waste being recycled, thats a lot of packaging going to landfill.
So here is our top tips for being greener when you receive a Cocoa Loco gift.
Cardboard Box and tissue paper - The simple option is to put it in the recycling. But it would be nice to wrap another gift in the tissue, relabel the box and send it as an unexpected present to a friend.
Wood Wool - Don't throw it away! Its useful as a fire lighter, in an animal hutch, on the compost heap or for packing something else in.
Brownies - Please recycle these by eating them! The cellophane packet they are wrapped in is biodegradable but dont eat it. If you do find yourself licking the wrapper, go online and order some more brownies :-)
If your council provides composting bins, a commercial composting scheme is the best place for our cellophane as the temperatures reached will help a rapid breakdown. Alternatively, they will breakdown in a domestic composting heap but this takes longer.
After all this, the only thing you should have left is crumbs!
Carbon Dioxide & Global Warning
Global warming - Real of perceived threat ? Whatever your views, there are some things we feel few would dispute. Atmospheric levels of CO2 are rising, human activity is contributing to this and the environmental, human and economic impact is far from clear.
The world is still in the process of understand this issue, the risks it poses, possible solutions and their implications. This is not stopping people from acting now, should we act too ?
At Cocoa Loco we think we should and we have been trying to understand how we can have a bigger impact beyond the simple advice, like turning the thermostat down by one degree.
Deforestation has been highlighted as the biggest source of human related CO2 being released into the atmosphere. For example, in the next 24 hours deforestation will release as much CO2 as 8 million people flying from London to New York.
There are a number of charities who seek to preserve rainforest from logging and clearance for farmland. We have recently sponsored a piece of land from Cool Earth, who are securing rainforest and working with the local communities to make it worth more to them standing than cut down.
With around 100 acres of rainforest being cleared a minute and more than 260 tonnes of CO2 locked up in each acre, even a small gesture can have a huge impact.
