For Fifers Matt and Ish Broadbent, moving Ocelot Chocolate from Edinburgh to Dundee was a fresh start.
Despite both being from Newport, the couple met in Glasgow after uni. Matt studied immunology, while Ish did illustration in Edinburgh.
Their passion for food led them to apply for a cooking job, despite having no professional experience. They got lucky, and headed to Italy to cook in a mountain hotel.
From cooking four-course dinners at night and climbing during the day, Ish and Matt went on to cook at a high-end chalet in France and then as private chefs in Hampshire.
During their chef stint, chocolate desserts stood out as a favourite for them to make and for guests to eat.
After moving back to Scotland – Edinburgh this time – Ish and Matt started Ocelot Chocolate from their kitchen table in 2014.
“We didn’t know a huge amount about chocolate, but like we did with those other jobs, we could learn as we go, which is what we did,” says Matt.
“We thought with our design background and our love of chocolate, we can create something beautiful that will stand out on the shelves.
“It seemed to be the perfect fit.”
Ocelot Chocolate starts fresh in Dundee
Ocelot started selling at a farmers’ market, before getting stocked in a few local shops.
After making an Instagram account, more businesses got in touch wanting to buy the chocolate. The colourful packaging even caught the attention of a London department store.
“We were stocking Selfridges from our flat, it was crazy,” Matt reminisces.
“They got in touch and it was like, do they know that we’re so small?
“We kept at it and got our own factory eventually, and managed to employ some staff.”
It was a tricky market to enter, craft chocolate was in its infancy in the UK and Ocelot was one of the first companies to start out.
The company grew and grew, until last year when the husband and wife set out on an ambitious project. They moved the factory to Edinburgh city centre and opened a cafe next door.
It had been in the works for a few years, but with the cost-of-living crisis setting in and costs rocketing post-Covid, their budget was blown.
The cafe needed to take off from the start, but instead it was slowly depleting Ocelot’s cash reserves. After four months, it had to close.
To allow Ocelot to continue, their chocolate supplier Original Beans stepped in and bought a majority of the business.
“We had a bit of a regroup, because it was a good opportunity to change things that hadn’t been working,” says Matt.
“We thought it was a bit of a fresh start. And we live a lot closer to Dundee as we moved to St Andrews two years ago.
“I love Dundee as a city, it feels up and coming, and it’s fun to be a part of that.”
‘Playful’ flavours from Ocelot Chocolate
Now set up in Dundee’s Mid Wynd with three members of staff, Ocelot is producing between 10,000 and 12,000 bars of chocolate a month.
First, they melt the chocolate and add any flavourings before it goes in the tempering machine. This is the most important part of the process to get the right texture and mouthfeel.
By heating and cooling the chocolate to certain temperatures, crystals form to give the finished bars a nice sheen, good snap and melt-in-the-mouth consistency.
Matt explains: “When you have a non-tempered bar of chocolate, it’s powdery and you can detect the particles of cocoa.
“When it’s tempered, it’s completely smooth and a lot of the solid cocoa particles are enveloped in cocoa butter, so it’s a lot smoother.”
From the start, the co-founders have used Original Beans chocolate because of its sustainable and ethical credentials.
While Ocelot’s parent company focuses on letting the chocolate speak for itself, the Dundee company likes to have fun with flavours.
Ocelot’s playful flavours include blood orange, black cherry, buckwheat and violet. There is also a dark sea salt chocolate, white chocolate with almonds and a dark milk chocolate.
“We have a mix of classic flavours that we know work very well, and some slightly different flavours that make people think about what can work with chocolate,” says Matt.
“My favourite is probably the violet. In the right hands, violet can be a nice flavour if you’re subtle with it.
“The buckwheat is another favourite. It’s traditionally not seen so much in chocolate, but it works very well.”
Going for ‘world domination’
As well as fun flavours, Ocelot Chocolate is known for its distinctive look. Instead of a traditional rectangular bar, it comes in a 70g square and the packaging is eye-catching.
Ish’s degree and the couple’s passion for design means they’ve created the artwork on every bar to make them stand out.
This was key in the emerging craft chocolate market they started out in.
Matt says: “Back in the day, it was very difficult to persuade someone to spend £5 on a bar of chocolate.
“Now it’s a bit easier for businesses to enter because people in the UK are more educated on what good chocolate is.”
After five months in Dundee, Ocelot is planning to trial its first bean-to-bar range at the start of next year. This involves starting with cocoa beans which are roasted, winnowed and ground before being mixed with sugar, and possibly milk or more cocoa butter.
New flavours are also in the pipeline for next year, some traditional ones and some “that are more left field”.
On top of the to-do list however, is to ship Ocelot Chocolate from Dundee and out to the world.
“We’ve got a warehouse in Germany that stores our goods, so we can ship to all over the EU,” says Matt.
“We’re in talks at the moment with an Australian distributor as well who’s looking to take our bars.
“North America as well, we’re in talks with some importers. That’s an amazing market for craft chocolate, because it’s very established.
“So I guess the next phase of Ocelot is world domination, in the craft sense.”
Conversation