Meet Our Makers: Lucy Bennetto of Bennetto Natural Foods Co

Lucy Bennetto is the founder of Bennetto Natural Foods Co, a certified B corp, organic, Fairtrade, Vegan and net climate positive business, creating award winning chocolate with a superfine smoothness. 

Beginning as a high school English and Drama teacher who happened to love chocolate, Lucy made her first chocolate bars from scratch in 2010.

The journey began from the kitchen bench top with a spice grinder, a box of organic cocoa beans, and a few eager students as taste testers.

C&C: Hi Lucy! Can you tell us a bit about the early days of Bennetto? Where did the idea come from and how did the business get started?

Lucy: The early days were definitely just chocolate curiosity - kitchen benchtop type stuff. I love chocolate but I do suffer from migraines with chocolate and I’ve always liked to create my own sweet treats that weren’t full of sugar, even back then (ten years ago). So, I was looking at sugar alternatives and then I decided that I’d make my own chocolate and use sugar alternatives like honey or agave nectar. 

I got on this journey of learning more and more about chocolate, realising that what makes chocolate so delicious is actually the melt in the mouth texture - and the fact that cocoa butter actually melts at the same temperature as your mouth and sugar gives it a nice consistency. I ended up learning a lot about chocolate and started making my own chocolates with actual sugar (not the other alternative sugars that I’d tried to set out to use that never really worked for me - the chocolate was more like fudge when I was using them). 

I got myself a little tabletop grinder and ordered some beans from the internet. I was teaching at the time, so I got set about making my own creations and one thing led to the other. I got a government grant to develop my recipes, learnt more and more and didn’t give up my day job. I kept experimenting and it just progressed and I’ve continued to work on the chocolate every day, which I love doing. 

C&C: There’s an amazing list of certifications that really set Bennetto apart from other brands. Can you tell our readers a bit about being B-Corp certified, a Net Climate Positive Brand and a living wage accredited employer?

Lucy: I started this brand from scratch, so it’s always been very personal to me. Everything has always been done in the way that I would want it, right from the start. Personally, I like organic food - organic and fairtrade chocolate was just the only option for me, I wouldn’t choose non organic. I wanted to create food that I would eat, basically. Especially with cocoa - when I learnt more about cocoa, I learnt that there’s a lot of social and environmental implications that go with growing cocoa. Right from the start, I knew that I could do things with integrity and it’s been easy, actually. It means that when it comes to a decision, I haven’t compromised on these things. I’ll ask ‘is it organic? Is it Fairtrade? Is it traceable? Are we using whole ingredients?’ and work using these questions.

Then came the certifications - I don’t think B Corp was around at the time, but it didn’t make it too hard for us. We just had to start really documenting and proving that we did things - improving some things too, and more measuring. I was lucky that I was of that frame of mind at the time and consumers do now like to make these more conscious choices of choosing Fairtrade and organic. I didn’t know that at the time, but that was just the journey that I was on at the time. 

C&C: Turning to the packaging of the chocolate, you reference the origin of the cocoa used in the making of the chocolate in a really creative and clever way, by incorporating illustrations of the birds from these countries into the packaging - can you tell us a bit about the Bennetto birds?

Lucy: I always wanted something quite quirky and fun in terms of the packaging. Birds were one of the options that I loved when I was working with the packaging designer one day, but I didn’t think they had any connection to the chocolate. They suggested that we use birds that belong to the areas that the cocoa comes from.

When we create new packaging we look at the sourcing - so we use Madagascan, Peruvian and Ecuadorian birds. We use them as inspiration, dress them up and make it fun. Down the side of the packaging, it has the name of the actual birds that we used as inspiration. So they do look quite like the actual birds. 

C&C: What has the process of getting Bennetto ‘on the shelf’ and into retailers been like?

Lucy: It’s never an easy process, but I was starting from the ground so it was gradual and step by step. My first step was actually in farmers markets in Christchurch, the next step was the local organic store and the next step after that was the local supermarket - which is great, because when you start dealing with the local supermarket, you’re on their system.

The next step has been working with distributors. In Australia, we started working with the wonderful Cartel & Co right from the start. We were very lucky to have them onboard with us, as the product was on the water heading to Australia from where we manufacture the product.

C&C: In that process of getting the products ‘on the shelf’ and going through that evolution, how did you end up working with a distributor and why did you choose to work with Cartel & Co? 

Lucy: I was developing the product in New Zealand and was making it by hand. I found that the business got a little bit bigger, so I was needing to move to access some proper equipment. We outsourced the manufacturing of the product in New Zealand and then it did get a bit bigger and I was fortunate enough to meet a Swiss manufacturer who completely ticked all the boxes for us - they were organic, Fairtrade, all fully traceable and they could work with our recipes. So I took a massive leap going from a hundred kilogram batches to three tonne batches. That’s when we started engaging with Cartel & Co to help us and we did New Zealand and Australia simultaneously. 

C&C: If I was brand new to the Bennetto world, which product would you recommend that I try first?

Lucy: The raspberry is definitely our bestseller. If you’re not into fruit, Hazelnut is always a good one because it’s quite creamy if you’re not used to dark chocolate (because it is all dark chocolate). The Orange Chilli is one with a real following because you’ve got the nice orange that comes first and a hint of chilli follows two or three seconds later. The Salted Caramel is also delicious - we don’t use milk, so we use almond butter instead of butter and that’s also very popular. 

C&C: What do you envision for the future of Bennetto as a brand?

Lucy: We would love to be a leading dark chocolate brand globally. We’ve got the ability to scale and can make chocolate to scale but keep the integrity of it the whole way. I think that’s one of our unique characteristics - we can produce a chocolate without the fillers and can do this to scale. 

We would love to be up there amongst one of the better dark chocolates around, because we can scale (we currently also sell in the UK & parts of Europe) - that’s the goal. We’re on a mission to get people to eat Fairtrade organic chocolate because it’s an environmental choice, improving livelihoods and soil quality too. It is our hope that one day all chocolate will be produced this way - not just ours. That way we would see real impact through chocolate, and wouldn't that be nice! 

—