Cork-based bean-to-bar chocolate company providing healthier, alternative chocolate treat 

A CORK-based bean-to-bar chocolate company is providing a healthier, more sustainable and alternative chocolate treat to its customers.

Exploding Tree is the brainchild of Allison Roberts, and has been in development since her childhood days in Canada.

The business combines fairtrade, organic Ghanaian cocoa beans with natural, healthier sweeteners to make groundbreakingly delicious chocolate that is easy on the conscience and pays homage to the mystical, humble cocoa bean.

Exploding Tree offers a wide range of chocolate products, including hand-crafted bars with a wide variety of flavours, craft bar selection boxes, Easter-themed treats and more, through its webshop and Cork headquarters. The Clonakilty-based business also offers a wide range of workshops, giving people the chance to taste and make the chocolate themselves.

Speaking to The Echo, Allison explained: “I actually started the bones of Exploding Tree chocolate in my childhood in Canada, and it travelled with me until we settled in Ireland in 2008. 

"That year I registered the business here in Ireland and we’ve been making chocolate here since.”

"For a short time I rebranded to Clonakilty Chocolate but came back to our original name again a few years later. I travelled to Ghana in 2013 to visit Kuapa Kokoo, a fairtrade cocoa farming cooperative, which spurred a shift from being a chocolatier (using a base chocolate and then making shapes/bars/flavours etc) to making my own base chocolate directly from the cocoa bean (bean-to-bar),” she added.

Allison explained that her passions are small business, sustainability, craft and food, and so the business has grown out of these.

“The aim of Exploding Tree is to provide healthier/alternative chocolate to those who are seeking it out, and to offer workshops and training to share what I know. We use fairtrade and organic cocoa beans and coconut sugar, sometimes combined with other ingredients to make a range of very unique and niche chocolates,” she said.

“These days I offer everything from raw cocoa beans to the finished products (chocolate bars, Easter eggs etc). The most popular products, and the ones I’m most excited about are my base chocolates - these are rough untempered shards of our various chocolates, packed by weight - and it means I can offer our yummy range of ethical chocolate at a price point that is easier on the pocketbook. I try to minimise packaging and my focus is on bulk and unwrapped chocolate at the moment,” she added.

At the moment, Exploding Tree has three staff at its micro-factory in Clonakilty, with the team growing to five during the busy parts of the year.

“Production and workshops are at our micro-factory, a 40 square metre space located behind our own home,” Allison explained. “We sell to locally-minded shops around Ireland and internationally via our webshop.”

Having been in business in Ireland since 2008, and on the road long before that, Exploding Tree has had to overcome its fair share of challenges, Allison explained.

“Trying to stay true to our own path has been a struggle,” she said. “There are a lot of pressures to sell to supermarkets or to grow and go more mainstream. Going against the grain is not something I always enjoy. We also had a big learning curve around trademarks along the way, that was a real struggle - anyone who hasn’t registered their business/product name with the trademark authority don’t wait!”

However, Allison and her business have also had their fair share of highlights.

“I love having my own business,” she stated. 

“I love that it is a creative outlet for me, that I don’t have to ask permission to take holidays and that I meet so many other interesting, self-employed, like-minded people through it.

“Being awarded the Irish Food Writers’ Guild ‘Sustainability Award’ in 2020 and going to the awards reception in Dublin was a massive highlight of my career, and just a few days before the covid shut everything down,” she added.

In exciting news for Allison and the Exploding Tree team, the Clonakilty-based company has increased its footing in the oat milk sector.

“We are thrilled to announce we have found a new partner for our range of oat milk products here in Ireland,” Allison revealed. “The Merry Mill is a family-run, organic farm and mill located in county Laois and we now use their gluten-free oats to make our ‘Creamy Oat’ cooking chocolate and bars. I have been looking for a organic gluten-free Irish oat supplier for years and so this is a great victory for us!”

For more, see explodingtree.com.