Last word sweet success

With Easter just a couple of weeks away and chocolate on the brain, who better to speak to for our LAST WORD than Cavan’s very own master chocolatier ANN RUDDEN of Áine Hand Made Chocolate. JENNY MCGOVERN caught up with her during what must surely be her busiest time of year...

**

Áine Hand Made Chocolate has been making deliciously smooth and creamy handmade Irish chocolate since 1999. The Cavan-based company was founded by Ann Rudden, a woman with a passion for her art. Her vision was to create chocolate as it should be - mouth watering, melt-in-the-mouth magic that is made with only the purest, freshest, natural ingredients. The company, which originally started out in Dublin, relocated to Ann’s hometown of Stradone in 2007 converting her father’s old unused garage business into a 5,000 sq foot chocolate factory.

Today, Áine Hand Made Chocolate employs a team of 10 who shares that passion for producing heavenly, handmade chocolate. Only the freshest butter and cream and local Irish ingredients make it into Áine’s delicious truffles, Irish crème liqueurs, chocolate bars and Easter eggs to name but a few. With 21 Great Taste Awards (the equivalent of the Irish ‘Food Oscars’) under her belt, as well as 13 gold medals for their range, Áine Hand Made Chocolate is showing no sign of slowing down.
“Chocolate is exciting, there’s so much scope to be artisinal with it and there’s the opportunity to use great, quality ingredients in innovative ways,” Ann begins. After studying bakery production and management in DIT’s Kevin Street, where she dabbled with bread, cakes and baking, Ann soon knew that chocolate was where her heart lay. “When I finished college in 1991, the mass-produced craft bakeries were in decline and the chocolate industry was really only beginning, I thought it would be an exciting area to delve into,” she recalls.
Although Ann had experience working in the chocolate industry and a passion for her budding business, she found it difficult to establish herself and set her business apart. “When I started out in 1999, I didn’t realise that you needed a good brand to get onto the supermarket shelves. It takes years to establish yourself as a quality brand. I attended countless farmers’ markets and consumer shows in order to build that essential trust with retailers.”
The artisinal food market has recently exploded in Ireland and the Celt wonder’s has this been a help or a hindrance for Áine’s Chocolates. “The artisinal market is very competitive. As well as that, we are competing with huge brand names. We don’t have a big marketing budget so we do rely on people to buy Irish local artisinal food and we are always very grateful for the support we’ve received from the local people and retailers over the years. We strive to keep our ingredients as local as possible and also try to use local printers and couriers,” she says.
With obesity epidemics and sugar tax dominating the news the Celt asks Ann if her business has been affected by the bad press. “Our consumers would be food lovers, people who know about chocolate. Of course people are health conscious and we cater for that market. Our dark chocolate has much less sugar and much higher cocoa content than the milk variety,” Ann explains.
There is increasing demand for health and well-being orientated products and Áine’s has recognised this shift in consumer demand. Recent statistics has shown that one in every 100 people in Ireland are Coeliac. As a result of this, all of Áine’s Chocolates are gluten free and a number of new ranges of sugar free chocolates are now also available.

Fifty tonnes of chocolate!
Now for the exciting part, the figures, approximately 40-50 tonnes of chocolate per year is produced from Ann’s chocolate factory. “We go through a lot of chocolate!” she laughs. “There are 10,000-13,000 bars made each week, 20,000-30,000 individual truffle sweets assembled, as well as speciality products.”
Right now in the run up to Easter, Ann’s team are busy creating delicious Easter eggs. She laughs at the comparison to Willy Wonka. “Yes it’s kind’ve like that, I always have people asking to go on a tour.”
Áine’s Chocolates spent the majority of 2014 on their product development, they currently have eighteen varieties of chocolate bar on the market, both milk and dark chocolate with some unusual ingredients including, raspberry, lime and lemon. The Celt wonders if they’ve ever created a monster in terms of chocolate bar. “We do a lot of product development in the factory so we have tried and tasted many crazy combinations, putting chilli in chocolate has really become a thing now, I personally don’t enjoy it. We once tried a mix of crispy smoked bacon in our chocolate bars, I don’t think there’d be a market for those kind of flavours her,” she admits. Her favourite flavour is Zesty Lime and Ann says that they’re always developing ideas for new flavours. “We do market research, we look to see where the gap in the market is, we create new flavours and bring them to shows where we can gauge the public reaction, if it’s positive then we’ll endeavour to launch it to the marketplace.”

Bono’s chocolate guitar
Pre-recession Áine’s dabbled in more speciality products, “In the past we’ve created a chocolate guitar for Bono! We’ve also made book covers on chocolate hearts for book launches. Those things take a lot of time of course and nowadays Áine’s Chocolate’s prefer to concentrate on producing products for the palate rather than show pieces. Áine’s Chocolates not only survived the recession it thrived throughout as a result of Ann’s thrifty innovative thinking. “Originally my vision for Áine’s Chocolates was to produce gift boxes and make a good business out of that. But of course the recession came and nobody had money to spend, especially not €30 on a box of chocolates. So we launched our smaller more affordable products, our 50g and 100g bars, our truffles and our hot chocolate swirl sticks.”

Exporting
Ann sees the positive in changing their business model. “On the back of it, we wouldn’t have gotten all the new business if we hadn’t of had to introduce our innovative new products. We were soon stocked in the major retailers across Ireland and were able to begin to export our products to the UK, Russia and Dubai.”
Áine’s Chocolates recently celebrated some good news as earlier this month they became the 88th member to receive an Origin Green Certification from Bord Bia. This certification ensures that Áine’s Chocolates has a verified commitment to sustainability along the supply chain-something that Ann is passionate about. “We are delighted to have been awarded the Origin Green by Bord Bia, as we are still a relatively small company. People nowadays are more aware of where their food is coming from and this certification means the customer will be assured we have an independently verified commitment to sustainability,” she enthuses.

What’s next
There are no immediate plans to launch new products yet Ann is excited about what the future holds for Áine’s chocolates. “We hope to grow the business worldwide, our aim this year is to gain another major retailer in Ireland and to secure more export customers. We hope to gain even more independent retailers who are the backbone of our business. I love my job, I love what I do and I’m very passionate about creating a high quality brand. I love seeing customers’ reactions when they taste our new products and hope that we can continue to supply great quality chocolate for many years to come.”