Seed and Bean Blog

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A new take on the tea break….the perfect partnership to start 2018!

Perk up that mid-afternoon lull in energy…..

We are delighted to share with you that we have partnered with Clipper Teas, the ethical and organic tea brand, a with like-minded tea producer with similar ethics and brand values.  The partnership will be a large scale on-pack promotion; available to all Clipper Teas retail partners nationwide e.g. Tesco, Sainsburys, Waitrose to name a few.

There will be over 300,000 packs of Clipper’s green tea carrying a Seed and Bean branded sticker which will give consumers an opportunity to claim a free bar of Seed and Bean’s 85g dark chocolate with four flavours to choose from: Extra Dark, Cornish Sea Salt, Extra Dark 72% Cocoa, Extra Dark Mint and Fine Dark Lemon and Cardamon (normal price, £2.69).

To claim the free chocolate bar, consumers will be directed towards a dedicated micro-site to enter the unique code printed on the inside of the box.

The promotional packs are available from now and will be available until stocks last.

The combination of cleansing green tea and dark chocolate will give consumers a fresh take on the mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack, offering an indulgent yet natural pick-me-up. To help introduce office workers to green tea and dark chocolate, Clipper will also deliver samples to over 500 major London businesses including Top Shop, Vogue House and Air BnB so if you’re lucky enough tho

Seed and Bean and Clipper Teas will be supporting the partnership across all their social media channels, which will include a collaborative social competition to win a hamper of green tea and dark chocolate.  So keep your eyes peeled!

Ends Jan 2018

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The Secret to Sweet Success…

With term time back into full swing, we couldn’t help but share this sweet secret, brace yourselves… chocolate helps to improve brain function!

We’ve all heard about chocolate helping to release happy feelings and endorphin’s. However, according to studies published in the journal Appetite, chocolate consumption has now even been proven to enhance cognitive performance. Participants in the study revealed that those that ate chocolate at least once a week demonstrated stronger brain functionality in everyday tasks such as remembering shopping lists and phone numbers. With the study season upon us, at Seed and Bean, we were fascinated by these articles and couldn’t help but google some more.

Our findings revealed that there’s surprisingly a whole array of studies and articles out there supporting the idea that chocolate is indeed linked to higher brain functionality. Don’t just take our word for it, take a look online and see for yourselves.

The health benefits associated to eating chocolates is truly remarkable. If there wasn’t reason enough for indulging, this truly has to be one of sweetest secrets to success and studying. The Telegraph took this theory even further by featuring an article that suggested that chocolate could even enhance our mathematical arithmetic. So the next time you’re sat crunching numbers be sure to have some Seed and Bean choccy to hand! We know we will.

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50 Bars For 50 Smiles

We recently joined forces with French actress, Sarah Barlondo who is also the founder of Moodboard Magazine.  We offered our  support her Easter campaign which was to walk around London over the bank holiday weekend offering bars of Seed and Bean to the homeless, 50 bars, 50 smiles.  As you can see from the video it was very well supported.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPUkoCsprq0

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Come Try Some Choccy

This Saturday & Sunday we will be exhibiting at the Althorp Food & Drink Festival at the stunning Althorp Estate in Northamptonshire.  We proudly handmake all our chocolate in Coby, Northamptonshire and supporting this event is very important to us, there will be whole host of other independent artisan food and drink brands there…come hungry!

 Doors open at 10 there’s a scheduled programme of events over the weekend too, including cooking masterclasses, kids sausage making and one not to be missed, the wine tasting!

 Please do come along, we’ll be sampling throughout the day and there will be special show offers available, we will also be doing  a few blind tastings throughout the day, with some rather delicious prizes!

 Hope to see you there!!

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It’s Fairtrade Fortnight

We are in the midst of Fairtrade Fortnight – this year it runs until 12th March – the Fairtrade movement is all about better prices, decent working conditions and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers and at Seed and Bean we are proud to support this cause in our chocolate making and have done since our launch and by buying our chocolate you are helping raise awareness and enhance this hugely important message.

 Our mission has always been to create the most ethical, sustainable and delicious handmade British chocolate.  We believe in courageous chocolate, mixing flavours from nature to transform the simplicity of a pure cocoa bean into what we call kaleidoscopic moments of pleasure; some tastes are easy on the palette, some quite unusual while others will rocket your taste buds – all are delicious.  

 We only produce chocolate that has been traded fairly and support the Fairtrade Foundation as much as we can, through the buying of our cocoa and chocolate production and also promotion year on year. Seed and Bean is proudly the UK’s most ethical chocolate brand in the UK (Good Shopper Guide 2011, 12, 13, 14, 15) and our trading and green credentials are vitally important to us as a brand.

 If you can try to swap 1 or 2 things on your shopping list to make it Fairtrade you will be helping a hugely important cause.

 To celebrate Fairtrade Fortnight we are have 20% OFF on all chocolate bought online!  Code fairtrade20

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Come see us at Biofach

The Seed & Bean machine is rolling into Nurenberg this week as we’re showing at the Biofach trade show. Europe’s biggest Organic show takes place this Wednesday until Saturday and if you’re attending you can catch us on stand 454 in hall 4. Come and have a chat and sample our delicious chocolate, it would be rude not to. 

If you can’t make Biofach, never fear, we’ll also be at the Natural & Organic Products show in April. 

Have a great week and we’ll see you in Germany.

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There's never been a better excuse to indulge...

Well it’s official.....According to Professor Alyn Morice from Hull University cocoa is best at curing a sore throat. Yes, the dream is finally a reality and having some cocoa rather then some lemon and honey might well be the answer to that irritating cough.  

The idea that chocolate could cure a cough might sound a bit mad, but the ROCOCO researchers believe the benefits are primarily down to the demulcent properties of cocoa.

But what does this actually mean?

This simply means it is stickier and more viscose than then standard cough medicines, so it forms a coating which protects nerve endings in the throat which trigger the urge to cough. Simple!

Everyone at Seed & Bean HQ is pretty excited by this new study and to make sure everyone is cured from those January blues we’ll be giving away some of our medicine across our social media channels this week.

Have a great week. 

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We’re at Vegan Life Live

A very Happy New Year from everyone at Seed & Bean. We hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and enjoyed lots of chocolate in your stockings. 

We’re got some amazing plans lined up for 2017 and it all kicks off this weekend at Vegan Life Live at Alexandra Palace. 

We have some ticket giveaways over the next 48 hours so keep an eye out on our Facebook and Twitter to be with a chance. 

If you’re already coming to the show make sure you pop along to our stand which is 151 where we’ll be sampling and selling our chocolate.

See you at the weekend. 

S&B 

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Back to Black

Dark chocolate lovers rejoice as it’s back to black... At Seed & Bean HQ we’ve worked tirelessly over the last six months to produce what we believe is the best 80% and 100% bar of chocolate. 

We’ve searched high and low to find the right bean to give us the perfect flavour and had to go bang on the equator to find it! This amazing bean is wild grown in the tropical lowland of Ecuador, in the depths of the Amazon rainforest. Amazingly, half of the crop is in the Northern Hemisphere and the other half in the Southern Hemisphere. You have to see it to believe it, or in your case, taste it. The flavours are like are like no other that we’ve ever tried before and believe us, we’ve tried a lot of chocolate!

These bars are ideal for the true dark chocolate connoisseurs with a sophisticated palate who enjoy an intense hit of cocoa.  The luxuriously deep and velvety chocolate delivers the ultimate chocolate intensity.  One thing we promise, there is no bitterness in these bold new bars. 

The “Fino de Aroma” cacao variety brings a discernible and unequaled depth in aroma and flavour. At Seed and Bean, Fairtrade is highly important to us. All of our cocoa is carefully cultivated by 396 farmer families. We work closely with our farmer families to ensure that they receive their deserved share of the entire farmer to consumer process –  a difference that profoundly affects producers’ quality of life.

Our bars are priced at £4.29 each and can be purchased from our online shop now.