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Oct 27

Callebaut Chocolatier Event 2017

Posted by Shona Sutherland on Friday, October 27, 2017

I was delighted to get the chance to go to the 'Callebaut Chocolatier' Event in London in October!
It was a hugely inspiring day, and seemed to cover many of the things I was eager to hear about.
The highlights for me were hearing about the innovative businesses using Callebaut products to create their merchandise, chocolate products with 'clean' labels (ie. natural as possible without additives), brand marketing, and most importantly of all, the immense work that goes on to help the cocoa farmers, their families and communities, which in turn improves a vast number of lives and makes the cocoa a sustainable product. 

It was also a good chance to see some familiar faces in the world of chocolate again! 

Below are some of the aforementioned innovative businesses: 


Jitsk Chocolates Antwerp

Cacao Sampaka

Benoit Nihant

Dandelion Chocolate

Taza Chocolate

X Brandon Olsen Chocolates

Puccini Bonboni

Dinara Kasko

Montezumas

Simply Chocolate

Carpigiani

More about the Cocoa Horizon's Foundation to improve the livelihoods of cocoa farmers and their communities can be read here: 

Cocoa Horizons

We had an interesting and humorous presentation by Herman Konings about marketing and trends, which was more in depth than I'd heard before. He had us captivated by his presentation style and he really honed in on what makes certain generations tick when it comes to advertising products. 

Herman also explained about Massimo Bottura, the well known Italian Chef (of Osteria Francescana), who famously turned an accident in the kitchen in to a selling attraction for his food! His point was to create originality through serendipity, so a perceived disaster could be made in to a huge positive! 

We heard about Ruby chocolate which is a new product from Callebaut. It will be on the market soon, although there will be limited availability of it. It is a pink coloured chocolate, made from the Ruby cocoa bean, and it has rich berry notes to it which occur naturally in the bean (so no added flavours or colours). I look forward to trying some myself! 

I was amazed to hear about the Chang Hong H2 Smartphone which can analyse food! With so much focus on what is in the food we eat recently, this app can give a full nutritional read out of what it scans....you can even analyse non-foods too! Fascinating to hear about! 

We were lucky enough to experience another new product, which was a stabiliser/base for Gelato.....wow, the product it made was stunningly good! 

All in all a fantastic day! Big thanks to Maley's Chocolates for organising!