Lucocoa Chocolate
I first met Ama Uzowuru in 2007 in her role as the Vice President of the National Union of Students. I've joked about how we're always floating around in each other's lives in some way or another - it was through Ama that I was first introduced to Cory aka Beef and the rest is history regarding my story with TrackMafia and Run Dem Crew.
As long as I've known Ama, she's always had an exciting project on the go, but none more exciting and inspiring as her current Lucocoa Chocolate business, which is growing at a lightning pace since she and her boyfriend, Andy Clarke, launched it at the London Chocolate Fair in March 2015.
Since April 2016, Lucocoa has been available at two Whole Foods stores in London (Kensington and Stoke Newington) and the future looks bright. I caught up with Ama, just as she had packed up her gazebo and returned home from her usual Saturday stint trading Lucocoa at Primrose Hill market, to find out a little more about the story of Lucocoa.
Ama explains that Lucocoa was born out of an idea that stemmed from her love of sport and her awareness of good nutrition for sporting performance. She has a proven track record playing football, as a runner and more recently as a boxer; "I realised just how important diet and nutrition was through boxing" and so in 2014, Ama set about trying to devise a range of healthy, but tasty snack products with the catch that each would be under 300 calories. Her boyfriend, Andy, suggested that she just focus on one product and do that properly rather than having a potentially huge scale production of multiple products under 300 calories, on top of keeping up with her full-time day job if the idea started to take off.
As part of their experiment in food product testing, the pair researched and trialled chocolate-making. Ama is keen to stress that she is a chocolate-maker ("there are fewer than 30 in the country and they make chocolate from the bean") and not a chocolatier ("there are thousands of them who work with pre-made chocolate"). Ama and Andy discovered that historically, chocolate was considered the "food of the gods" but that reputation had been destroyed over the centuries with chocolate being produced with added refined sugar and vegetable oils, reducing chocolate to an unhealthy guilty pleasure. Ama thought that "surely there was a better way" to make chocolate in different rich and healthy flavours so that it could be enjoyed and appreciated again as the food of the gods.
With this principle in mind, through recipe testing and trial, the Lucocao concept was born as a "not naughty, just nice", delicious chocolate range with no refined or added sugars, but using lucuma, coconut sugar and cocoa beans instead. They believed in their core products so much that they used them to influence their company name. LU – lucuma CO- Coconut sugar COA –Cocoa beans and cocoa butter: LUCOCOA
The scale of the brand’s progress becomes clear when Ama explains that at first she had "no idea how to make chocolate" so she and Andy taught themselves by watching YouTube videos and reading books. They imported beans from Madagascar, Belize, Guatemala and Dominican Republic, having no experience of importing ingredients and having to explain to suppliers that they didn't understand the official details they were being asked to provide when they were trying to order products. That seems to have all changed now as Ama expertly describes the bean to bar making process. This involves roasting, willowing and conching the beans and then finally tempering the chocolate into bars in optimum weather conditions at 5am in order to get the look of the Lucocoa bars just right. All this just flows naturally when Ama talks about her venture although she admits to being constantly nervous about knowing enough and hoping people like the products.
After friends and family tested early sample products, the Lucocoa range was first sold at the London Chocolate Festival in March 2015 when they "rocked up" to the festival as the new bean to bar kids on the block. A spot at Brick Lane market followed in the summer of 2015 - "it was a real hustle" - the whole project feels like being on The Apprentice full-time and the Brick Lane market period for Lucocoa was like the street level selling task. This period was tough as Ama was working full-time for a busy tech start-up, which meant that between customers on a Sunday she was on her laptop doing work for her day job. She says it was simply unsustainable as she was working 7 days a week so she changed jobs to work for Unicef and switched from Brick Lane Market to the current pitch on a Saturday (10am – 3pm) at Primrose Hill market.
Ama describes her new routine as being more ‘relaxed’ compared to the early days, but she is still up at 5am to do "chocolate emails" and product making until 7am, working at Unicef until 5:30pm and then returns for the evening Lucocoa shift from 7:30pm until midnight.
Through her previous work and through sport I had always known Ama as strong-willed, hard-working and determined and I ask whether her sporting characteristics overlap with her work on Lucocoa. She explains that her determination comes from not wanting to fail and constantly seeking that next goal – like in running when you are hunting down the PB. In this business, Ama is working to grow it and gets a sense of achievement each time the capacity to do more is expanded to the next level. She tells me that the day before, Lucocoa had won a bronze award from the Chocolate Academy awards, but "it should have been gold" - a true competitor.
I wondered whether they had their own Willy Wonka factory to make the chocolate - apparently it’s not as glamorous as that as the 'factory' is the spare room in their 2-bedroom flat, which is kitted out with a big metal table and the beloved half-ton heavy chocolate grinder and a dedicated chocolate fridge.
Although Ama does the lion's share of the work due to Andy's ever increasingly busy schedule as a boxing and football commentator, he also helps out with roasting, willowing and packaging as much as possible. She also credits Andy for having the spirit to “do things properly” and get the whole idea off the ground and to be operating on the scale it is now.
And finally, what’s next for Lucocoa? - "chocolate world domination" exclaims Ama straight away. I can’t wait to watch the story unfold.
Available to purchase at Wholefood Market (Kensington & Stoke Newington), Raw Press (Green Park and Sloane Sq) , Hortus shop in Blackheath, Chocolate Museum in Brixton. Lurem clothes shop in Bethnal Green , www.cocoarunners.com and directly from them weekly at Saturdays at Primrose Hill market 10-3pm
Twitter @lucocoachoc Instagram @lucocoachocolate
-- Warwick