New website July 2020
We’re delighted to unveil our new website. Insights based innovation’s been a feature of our journey from Charley’s early days. Our new site reflects our refreshed visual identity and is designed for the best customer experience.
We tell the cocoa story, bringing to life cocoa’s history from Aztec days, exploring cocoa regions and ideal growing conditions, illuminating cocoa processing methods and providing easy to understand explainers on cocoa and chocolate research and on our planet.
Our new online store makes it easier than ever to browse and purchase our award winning chocolate bars for delivery to your door with just a few clicks! We’ve added some new sections to quickly identify what’s on special as well as our featured products.
Booking a Charley’s tour is straightforward and there are many helpful hints about what to expect as well as customer reviews. We’d love to welcome you next time you’re in this wonderful part of the world!
We share our amazing journey from our origins to Charley’s growing cocoa and making award winning chocolate in just a few short years. We introduce the wonderful folk from around the world and across multiple disciplines who support us every step of the way. And we provide informative background on our involvement in the communities and regions of far north Queensland and Papua New Guinea.
We wouldn’t be where we are today without our amazing partners. We include a dedicated section with interesting nuggets about our suppliers, retailers and researchers.
Our new site offers an interactive poll where we pose intriguing questions as well as a popular Ask Charley section. Or you can learn about investing in Charley’s and buy your very own share of our exciting organisation.
Thanks to inputs from our talented associates including Non-executive Directors and Advisory Board Members, we feature some fascinating blogs on a range of topics from fermentation, veganism and gluten free to chocolate and sugar. We canvass ideas ranging from sustainability to innovation. And we present opinion pieces on cocoa growing and regional differences.
We’ll regularly update our site so encourage you to check back to try out new products, learn about Charley’s latest activities, see our recent press activity, vote in our polls and be inspired by new blogs!
Hawaii cocoa tour March 2020
Board Chair Ruth Medd and Advisory Board Chair David Herlihy visited Hawaii in March 2020 to learn about Hawaii’s cooca growing practices and meet with industry experts and cocoa growers and chocolate makers. The self-funded field trip focused on cocoa growing research, chocolate making and chocolate marketing and provided many interesting insights as well as valuable contacts, all at no cost to Charley’s.
Hawaii's climate is typical for the tropics, although temperatures and humidity tend to be less extreme due to near constant trade winds from the east. Summer highs usually reach around 88 °F (31 °C) during the day, with the temperature reaching a low of 75 °F (24 °C) at night. Winter day temperatures are usually around 83 °F (28 °C); at low elevation they seldom dip below 65 °F (18 °C) at night.
Hawaii’s further from the equator than Cairns or Mission Beach which results in challenges when fermenting cocoa beans.
We met with some movers and shakers in the Hawaiian cocoa industry to investigate technical, product quality, development and marketing expertise.
Skip Bittenbender, University of Hawaii Emeritus Professor in the Department of Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences at Manoa, provided technical insights. Skip is the doyen of cocoa research in Hawaii and a mentor to many in the industry. His research covers cocoa, coffee and kava and we were invited to a kava tasting! As well as his research he helps coffee, cacao and kava commodity organisations in dealing with current issues and planning for the future.
Madre Chocolates Founder Dr Nat Bletter welcomed us with a delectable chocolate tasting! Using Hawaiian beans as well as beans from South and Central America, Nat makes chocolate for several growers and for his own company. He brings 15 years’ experience in botany including documentation of exotic fruits and vegetables, gathering food in the wild and herbal and traditional medicine. Nat has a PhD in Ethnobotany from the City University of New York and New York Botanical Garden where he researched medicinal plants from Peru, Mali and the Guatemalan Mayans, as well as ethnobotany, taste modifying plants and stimulant plants including cacao. His technical expertise is supplemented by numerous expeditions exploring Asia, South America, Central America, and Africa. This extensive background spurred Nat to start a traditional ingredient, high antioxidant, artisanal chocolate company Madre Chocolate. Quite the expert!
Very much the entrepreneur, Mānoa Chocolate Founder & Chocolate Maker Dylan Butterbaugh offered his marketing and production wisdom. Located in Kailua Oahu, Mānoa Chocolate’s a bean to bar producer specialising in crafting single origin and dark milk inclusion bars by sourcing premium cacao beans from Hawaii and globally. Butterbaugh was exposed to chocolate production at the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture. Fascinated with the craft of transforming cacao beans into dark chocolate, he launched Mānoa Chocolate in 2010 with a focus on ethical sourcing and high quality local manufacturing.
Sources
New equipment January 2020
Charleys has been making chocolate since 2014. We started with small scale equipment. Chocolate making equipment is a global business with many reputable suppliers. Some suppliers specialise in craft chocolate equipment which has a smaller capacity (and lower cost) than equipment used by the major chocolate manufacturers.
In 2019 we installed the first of our modular manufacturing units, customised shipping containers to house our operations. This unit was funded by the then existing shareholders and some new shareholders.
In late 2019 Charley’s embarked on a crowd source funding campaign. The campaign document detailed the equipment to be purchased using the funds raised. So far in 2020 we’ve taken delivery of several pieces of equipment to improve Charley’s operations.
Roaster
We purchased and installed a 20 kg roaster. We sourced the burner from Turkey, modifications and addition of gas elements were done in Sydney at Roastquip (in case you need a roaster!) and, finally, local installation and certification was completed on site at Charley’s in Mission Beach as required under food legislation and standards.
Office & shop
We took delivery in 2020 of a 20 foot converted shipping container to serve as an office and shop, Converted pre-loved shipping containers are used widely, providing a cost effective, rapid and customised option. These containers, for example, were appreciated as part of the post Christchurch New Zealand earthquake build of the city retail precinct. We purchase our containers from Cairns where initial modifications are done to provide creature comforts. Final modifications are done onsite by local tradespeople.
Our second modular unit, a 40 foot converted shipping container, is planned for installation later in 2020 (there’s a current rush on shipping containers!) This container needs substantial modifications to ensure it’s up to food safety standard.
The next items we intend to acquire are to extend our traditional chocolate making equipment supply of winnowers, conches and tempering machines.
Capital raise December 2019
In late 2019 Charley’s successfully completed a crowd funding capital raise, adding an additional 150 shareholders. To support the capital raise we used online platform Birchal, an Australian market leader in crowd source funding with a specialty in retail brands. We were a good candidate with our consumer appeal–most people love chocolate–and good news tropical story.
Birchal has an easy to follow process and considerable assistance is offered to first time platform users such as Charley’s. Crowd source funding is regulated so there are various documents and signoffs required along the way. The awareness raising part of the process is important to attract broad interest and consequent expressions of interest that convert to an investment. Birchal’s platform and associated costs are similar to costs of other fundraising types, and our total cost was just under 10% of funds raised (larger raises result in lower percentage costs).
Birchal recommend a reward structure as part of the offer. We offered discounts on purchases and complementary access to Charleys tours depending on the investment size. So, it’s a win-win situation, with shareholders as chocolate consumers and new Charley’s customers while they wait for financial rewards.
Of the new shareholders, many were existing customers.
Funds are being used for increasing manufacturing capacity and marketing to grow sales. On the manufacturing side we’re using the capital raised to increase tree plantings and purchase processing and manufacturing equipment. We’ve recently upgraded our roasting facility and an additional manufacturing pod is on order. The other use of funds is marketing spend in the form of brand building, website upgrade, ecomms upgrade and better use of analytics to track progress.
All in a day’s work for a brand seeking national and global recognition!