‘Don’t get too serious about chocolate’

Your life cannot get any sweeter than it does for L Nitin Chordia as he gets to eat chocolates day in, day out. But it is all not that easy as it sounds nor is it any interesting but Chordia makes the best of what he can.

Life is just like any other profession for Chordia, an assignment where he has to objectively and constructively give feedback to his clients. But he must be enjoying as he gets to taste chocolates every day? “It is not always necessary that you taste good chocolates. It is very common that a day passes without us really tasting any good chocolates,” says Chordia.

He adds, "But the good part is that when we stumble upon good stuff, we consider ourselves extremely lucky to be in this profession because that is the eureka moment or the highlight of our day which we never forget."

Asked to describe one of his most memorable moments, Chordia travels back four years when he had tasted a 100% dark chocolate which was not bitter at all! He explains, “For it was made from Heirloom beans from Ecuador, which are of superior quality. Hence, the chocolate had no acidity and zero bitterness."

Apart from being a certified chocolate taster, Chordia, along with his wife, Poonam who is India’s first certified female chocolate taster, have their own bean to bar chocolate brand in Chennai, Kocoatrait. They claim to be India’s first sustainable luxury zero waste, organic and planet-friendly Bean to Bar Chocolate brand.

The idea, shares Chordia, to be in this ‘sweet’ business was conceived on a flight in 2018 and Kocoatrait saw the light of the day a year later, in Amsterdam at Chocoa, a chocolate exhibition.

How does the couple then ensure that the chocolate is sustainable and planet-friendly? “A lot of research went into it,” says Chordia, adding that they started buying cocoa beans from farmers who did not employ child labour, paid more than fair trade prices, started using smart ways to economise on the energy that they were using. For instance, they do not use LPG for roasting cocoa, since gas is a non-renewable resource. They instead use energy efficient electricity-based air roasters to roast the cocoa.

Even the most talked about aspect of the chocolate- the wrapper and the printing- is eco-friendly. “Our chocolate is zero waste in the sense that the wrapper we use to wrap the chocolate is completely paper, plastic and tree free. It is entirely made from cocoa husk and reclaimed cotton. This material is natural, made out of plant-based fibre and it is bio-degradable, compostable and recyclable. Our entire operations right from the cocoa farm till the final chocolate bar, we have not cut or felled even one single tree to meet our business need,” he shares.

For printing, they use screen printing, which means it uses no electricity as it is a manual process. They only use water-based ink instead of chemical or plastic ink for printing. Inside the wrapper, the customer can find things like greeting cards, bookmarks, mandala art templates and health tracker. “There are so many things you can do with the wrapper before you decide to dispose it off.” For wrappers, printing is done at an institute that employs differently abled people. “So, for us, being sustainable is also means communities being involved,” he says. 

On how the pandemic affected their business, he shares that it has been, on the contrary, a huge advantage as they had doubled their capacity. “Earlier, our sales from online business was around 10% of the total sales.Today, it is around 40%. Both, offline and online, businesses have grown. So, per month we make about 2000 bars of chocolate, and it used to be only 1000 before the pandemic.”

When asked about if they were looking at any hospitality collaborations, he candidly shares that he sees no hope in this segment. “The pricing of our products will never match with what the hospitality sector wants,” he says, and that nobody is willing to pay a high price for quality products.

Sharing a message for all the chocolate lovers, he says that there is a lot of marketing that happens with sugar-free chocolates, high-protein chocolate among others, stuff where they have removed the real goodness of chocolate and added various kinds of sugar alcohols which are not good for your body just to make it more 'healthy'. “You shouldn’t be fooling yourself as consumers. Go with the ingredients and go with natural ingredients because you should enjoy chocolate for the fun of it. Don’t get too serious about chocolate,” he concludes.