Winning awards with chocolates inspired by satay sauce and salted eggs
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Winning awards with chocolates inspired by satay sauce and salted eggs
Meet Jay Chua, Charis Chia and Yilina Leong of Singapore's Fossa Chocolate, which has won international awards for assuming flavours like Chilli Peanut Praline and Salted Egg Cereal.
Yilina Leong, Jay Chua and Charis Chia are the trio backside Singapore's first edible bean-to-bar chocolate company, Fossa Chocolate. (Photograph: Fossa Chocolate)
eighteen Jun 2022 06:30AM (Updated: 09 Jul 2022 08:06AM)
All you need is love, said Charles Schultz, the famous American cartoonist behind the Peanuts comic strip. "But a little chocolate now and so doesn't injure." In these trying times, comfort is sweet in confections like those of Singapore's commencement edible bean-to-bar chocolate visitor, Fossa Chocolate.
What started equally a side passion project by Jay Chua in 2022 became a business organization with two other friends, Charis Chia and Yilina Leong, in 2017. That was when the trio realised that much more than meaningful backstories lay in handcrafted chocolates than industrially produced ones.
From facing a skeptical market who baulked at paying premium prices compared to those of mass-made bars in the early stages, to pushing the flavour boundaries of a more sophisticated and audacious client base, the trio has overcome some of the greatest challenges in growing their niche business concern – until COVID-19 reared its caput and acquired sales to plunge past 90 per cent.
"The coronavirus pandemic and circuit breaker took us past surprise. We have a lot of overseas customers and this has afflicted our operations drastically," business and marketing managing director Leong shared with CNA Luxury.
"People typically don't buy chocolates in [the northern hemisphere] summertime equally the items don't concord up well in the heat, so we've already missed the superlative season of chocolate shipping to our overseas partners."
Fossa's chocolates are sold in over 140 stores away, mostly in the United states and Canada, with the rest in Australia, French republic, the Maldives and Hong Kong.
In spite of having its own battle to fight, the team also turned their thoughts towards other local retailers whose sales were affected when customers could not frequent their cafe distributors and purchase their products.
"In the spirit of supporting each other, nosotros started list some products of homegrown brands with similar ethos to ours on our website," said Chua. These include tea leaves from Pekoe & Imp and Antea Social, mystery books from The Novel Encounter, Huggs Coffee's brewed coffee, Foreword Coffee's coffee numberless, boom wraps from Nodspark, and Hush Candle'due south essential oil room sprays and candles.
Fossa's plans to launch new items such as snack boxes and limited-edition chocolates throughout the year were besides changed.
"COVID-19 gave us time off our usual product schedule to bring forrad the new launches," said Leong. "We run across that product innovations keep customers excited. With the disruption of our traditional sales channels and consumer behaviour, it is crucial for u.s.a. to quickly adapt in social club to keep doing what we love."
One of the limited releases was a batch of 50 chocolates made with Oko Caribe beans from a smallholding farmer in the Dominican Commonwealth. The beans were set aside for 2 years for an aging experiment and were only used early on this year.
The effect was a fun melange of raspberry jam and manuka honey flavours, with a taste reminiscent of a well-aged orange wine. Customers snapped up all the bars inside a few days, with some dropping not merely ane, but a few into their carts.
"People were buying every bit gifts to friends and colleagues, every bit well equally comfort food for themselves," said Chua, who is the master wizard together with Chia in experimenting with flavours and making the chocolates.
For every season that finally makes information technology on the market, there are 9 others that neglect the taste examination, such as a chilli-and-pineapple combination that Chua liked, merely Chia didn't.
Chia explained: "When information technology comes to local flavours, consumers are much more than particular because these are familiar to them. So we need to ensure that resemblance when we recreate information technology in our chocolate.
"Chilli in itself has no body to its taste, and then we tried a variety of ingredient combinations. The dish that somewhen inspired our last Chilli Peanut Praline was the satay sauce that had peanuts."
The company has washed well in the International Chocolate Awards Asia-Pacific for the by iii years, sweeping a record booty of seven awards in 2022 for flavours such as Pak Eddy 70% Dark, Duck Shit Dancong Oolong, Chilli Peanut Praline and Salted Egg Cereal, which besides happen to be the more popular flavours amongst its customers, especially the overseas ones.
Some were adult quite serendipitously. For case, the Duck Shit Dancong Oolong chocolate, and then-called because i of its ingredients is a special oolong varietal from the Phoenix Mountain in China's Guangdong province that is fertilised by duck poop, resulted from hours of research for a tea-chocolate pairing workshop with Pekoe & Imp in July 2019.
Thankfully, it neither tastes nor smells similar its name. Instead, it carries flavours of longan and malt with a floral and mineral finish, enhanced by vino butt-fermented cacao beans from Pahang, Malaysia.
The team is currently re-evaluating their business model and mapping out the side by side steps to abound it further. Leong said: "Nosotros started the company with the aim to bring better chocolate to our local community, and did this by introducing it as a product that'due south made with care and intent, as reflected by our sourcing and making ethos.
"Over the years, we also started pushing the season boundaries beyond the typical plain chocolate bar, introducing unconventional season combinations that evoke memories and emotions. Even equally nosotros continue to grow our footprint and volume over the next three to five years, we will ensure that our company'south Deoxyribonucleic acid of stringent standards, curiosity for flavours and experimental nature continues."
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Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/people/fossa-chocolate-singapore-251536
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