Chocolate factory for York city centre

The £750,000 production facility will mark a return of traditional chocolate making to the city centre, which has not had its own cocoa bean roasting and grinding processes since the closure of Craven’s Ebor Confectionery works in Coppergate in the 1960’s.

The scheme is the brainchild of chocolate enthusiast Sophie Jewett, who runs York Cocoa House in Blake Street.

She has secured planning permission to convert empty office space, previously home to the Job Centre, in Castlegate, into a chocolate production, education and development centre.

Named York Cocoa Works, the site will supply chocolate for the confectionery and cafe operations at York Cocoa House, as well as other chocolatiers across the city and beyond.

Other businesses will also be invited to use the facility’s equipment, which has been manufactured in Brazil and arrived last week, to create their own chocolate blends.

Ms Jewett said: “We’re telling the story from working with the farmers on plantations in Columbia to the end box of chocolates.

“We started chocolate making at the Cocoa House with a single batch process.

"It became clear that was inefficient and had limited opportunity to scale and grow the opportunities we knew were there.

“We needed a production facility that would allow us to not just make the chocolate we wanted to make, but add additional capacity for other chocolatiers to share access to ingredients and equipment.

“We wanted to be properly making chocolate in York again, and offer others access to make their own chocolate as well.

“The chocolate industry has been off-shoring production, we want to make sure we bring that back.”

The factory, which will also feature a cafe and shop, will have the capacity to make 150 tonnes of chocolate a year, and will lead to the creation of 20 jobs across the operation.

More than £150,000 has already been invested in the project, with a £65,000 grant secured from the Leeds City Region LEP, and a £18,000 Innovation grant administered through the University of York.

To raise the final £250,000 needed for the construction and fit-out, Ms Jewett will be launching a crowdfunding campaign on Crowd Cube, in return for a total of 15 per cent equity in the business.

The campaign will go live exclusively to York residents on Friday 28, before becoming available more widely the following Monday.

Subject to funds being secured work is expected to start on site in September, with the factory opening in January 2018.

Before then Ms Jewett will be hosting a series of “discovery days” at the Cocoa House, as well as an open day at the Cocoa Works on August 8, between 10 and 11am.

She said: “This is a learning process, and we are inviting people to our discovery days to be part of it, so they can learn how we make chocolate, and provide their own input on the processes and the tastes we are creating.

“Chocolate hasn’t been made in this way on this scale in the UK since the 1930’s, and we want to share what we are doing.

“We are also creating a training programme for people to come and work across the business.

“We want to create a place where we can utilise York’s industry knowledge and make sure it’s not lost while working collaboratively across the industry to bring skills and projects together.”

Ms Jewitt won the backing of TV star and business "dragon" Deborah Meaden who provide a year's mentorship to the business after it won the national Local Business Accelerators scheme in October 2013.

As part of the prize the business also received £10,000 to help the company grow, as well as an iPad, broadband services, and an advertising campaign by a London agency.

As reported in The Press, Ms Jewett had previously revealed plans to create the Cocoa Works in the old Liquor Store at the former Terry’s Chocolate Factory.

She said: “We had an offer in for the liquor store building just over a year ago.

"Since then there was a lot of uncertainty about what would happen on the site, and we got to the stage where we wanted to focus our energy on making chocolate rather than develop a building.

“We were consolidating our vision and found the Castlegate site.

"It made us realise we wanted to focus on the future of the industry rather than being precious about trying to be part of the history.

"We are really excited to be here.”