Cakes, Cocktails, and Critical Thinking...
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Hello everyone. Well, it’s been a wee while. Welcome back. I hope you’re all well, that your business is back in the black, your talented teams have returned, you’ve weathered the storm and are confidently planning your next creative and commercial adventures.
Following hospitality’s temporary demise, I was extremely lucky during Covid to be asked to carry out some interesting ad-hoc assignments. Including working as a NED for a cake brand whose letterbox sales sky rocketed by 120%, a start-up cocktail company who needed an e-commerce website quickly and an advertising agency who required ‘tone of voice’ direction on how to stand out in a challenging competitor marketplace.
Recently I’ve been working in a variety of different roles, for example, auditing an acclaimed entertainment retail brand, reviewing their marketing planning and personnel plus setting up a successor plan for the CEO. Creating brand guidelines and standards for a beautiful new restaurant brand whose core values are a rare combination of warmth, empathy and inclusion; who have no trouble recruiting talented, amazing hospitality-rich people into their family style business. Planning social media campaigns and strategic brand marketing plans for a premium student accommodation brand who have achieved amazing sales success through consistently embracing and exhibiting generosity, kindness, community, safety, style, personality and well-being to their residents and potential tenants.
Life feels ferociously fast right now, working hard to regain pre pandemic speed and paper after the furloughs and financial fall out. I can see London’s still a ghost town on Mondays and Fridays as office staff embrace hybrid working, promiscuously picking their employers and locations according to business surges and local people shortages. Half the high street has disappeared now due to tired brands and digital, to be replaced by exciting experiential concepts, canteens and an abundance of pizza and burgers. I’m very pleased to see my former clients Pizza Pilgrims launching in Brighton too, yum!
20% of people have actually changed careers (according to a survey from Prudential) and 46% of us right now are considering a career change, per data collected by Microsoft. These last few years have really got me thinking about the what, the why and the when. Things like, what sort of working life do I really want? Throughout such a life changing experience, what did I learn?
I concur that cocktails, carbs and cakes will eternally be popular, especially in times of stress, and still smile that my favourite exercise during lockdown was walking to the bakers. I also concur that letterboxes are indeed still a great invention, and that they should become bigger and better as we continue to use our homes as offices and delivery depots. I quickly figured out I had to be extra nice to all my neighbours, who are becoming unpaid post masters. I also realised that very few companies send us genuinely nice, memorable, tangible things in the post, and the power of packaging and good old direct marketing lives on.
To those of you who have made it this far, I’d like to share that, after much professional soul searching, I decided to go back to university and sharpen my skillsets so that I can be of even better use to businesses and brands in the future. Above is a pic of me and my colleagues in the classroom, hoping I’m not that easy to spot…
I’m doing a part time MBA (Master in Business Administration) at University of Sussex, which is a truly wonderful game changer. A humungous thank you has to go to one of my favourite former employers, Robin Rowland OBE, who filled out all the tricky forms and wrote the required reference letter.
"Georgia was with YO! Sushi for three years and in that time was a major player in making YO! Sushi the No.1 global brand it is today."
I’ve almost finished the first year now, and have managed the modules in marketing, brand, finance and leadership. You would think I would’ve skipped through the marketing course, but that was actually the most challenging, academically. Discovering how to listen and learn again, how to be intellectually curious, to collaborate with colleagues from all over the world on assignments, how to debate and challenge constructively as well as think critically – and do homework!
My course director, Sam Roscoe, manages to sum it all up rather nicely, "on the MBA, you’ll learn to think in new and creative ways to overcome the challenges of doing business in a disrupted world."
I welcome any feedback, communication or opportunity to say hello.
For further information on people power, world class brand strategies, business planning or digital expertise please contact georgia@ghbrand.co.uk
The Grenada Chocolate Company was founded in 2000 by Mott Green, Doug Browne and Edmond Brown. Chantal has been supporting the company since 2002, investing in a small organic cocoa farm in 2007. Following the two hurricanes Ivan and Emily, and the untimely deaths of both Mott & Doug, she continues to support the farmers and workers of Grenada Chocolate Co with training, setting up community shops and creating co-operative chocolate products. Chantal sits on the Board and is now a shareholder of the company.
With global cocoa production estimated to hit a record high this year at 4.85 million metric tons, I sat down with Chantal to discuss her current thoughts, dreams and plans regarding her present positioning in the chocolate industry, new brand range as well as her thoughts around provenance, procurement and the future of our favourite product.
Chantal, please tell me about your unprecedented last year and your new brand, The Chocolate Detective.
“Well, I want to let everyone know that I no longer work for, or own, Rococo Chocolates and we’re currently in a long negative legal situation. It’s probably best for me to leave that shocking statement there. So, I’ve been busy trying to think about what I should do with my life experience and decided to launch a new couture chocolate brand, as my life’s mission is still in creating, producing and selling the world’s best chocolate.
I’ve named it ‘Chocolate Detective’ as an alter ego, looking at shining a light and examining what’s going on in the world of chocolate with a necessary magnifying glass. Doing what we can to bring attention to good, ethical business models, recognising the importance of knowing where your cocoa actually comes from and hoping people are beginning to understand relationship with producers, roots and adding value to local economies. Grenada has had an extraordinarily difficult year with the pandemic but thankfully I’m still able to meet with the teams virtually and create products for sale in the UK.
There’s thirty-three new products available, specifically curated for their taste, flavour, texture and difference, confidentially created to stand out in a very crowded marketplace. I was feeling rather nervous about starting up again, but then I received a wonderful gift, out of the blue, from the illustrator Sir Quentin Blake, who has designed me a new, beautiful, illustrative logo. I think his drawing truly is the work of a genius, the woman looks like she just stepped away from the Jurassic cliffs in the 19th Century, it's perfect....of course I’m working on the corsets!
I’ve also put the same amount of pleasure and detail into the packaging so that when you gift someone some Chocolate Detective, or indeed buy yourself a treat, you can enjoy the chocolate as a wrapped work of art, with the anticipation of opening and keeping the product fresh through exquisite layers which protect and display.
There are three main strands to the Chocolate Detective collections: Connected, Created and Curated.
Connected means working with cocoa farmers in Grenada and highlighting sustainable chocolate made at grass roots level “Tree to Bar”, keeping value in local economies. Whilst Chantal’s recipes like the Golden Sea Salt invented while running after her toddler on the Constantine Beach can be discovered in Created. Curated includes collaborations with other artists and producers of distinction, classics meant for sharing.
New flavours have been dreamt up which mean something to me personally and historically, remembering salty ice cream kisses on Cornish beaches, the kick of 70% cocoa derived from pods which have enjoyed Grenadian sunshine and imbibing the love and care of the cooperative farm workers."
Chantal’s been busy experimenting, drawing, tempering, experimenting and hand-painting as well as collaborating with Madeline Floyd the illustrator, who has done 2 books for the National Trust on a bird egg collection with a rainbow nightingale chocolate egg. Terrifically messy and exquisitely unique, real couture chocolate.
"My biggest seller to date is probably the Black Bird Eggs and the divine Sea Salt Thins. I’ve also been consulting with Fortnum & Mason, working with the Academy of Chocolate, as co-chair) looking after my local community gardens and bees, designing for the ethical diamond company and liaising with Tom Dixon the legendary interior designer. My next few months will be spent ensuring the future of the Grenada Chocolate company workers, experimenting with Vegan and plant based tastes, thinking about who grew the beans, the soil used, the pod, the terrain and the earth and always the ethics.
I’m going to be starting the business earnestly over the next year, looking at funding, planning, ensuring commercial growth and reconnecting with all my favourite resellers including Liberty, the major luxury retailers as well as the hundreds of boutiques worldwide whom I’ve grown up with for over 30 years. It's an exciting time and I’m very much looking forward to the new."
To communicate or talk about investment with Chantal please email chantal.coady@me.com or to check out the new chocolates please go to www.chocolatedetective.co.uk
For further information on people power, world class brand strategies, business planning or digital expertise please contact Georgia on georgia@ghbrand.co.uk