It was lockdown, and Ella McKay and friends were moaning about the chocolate aisle. “Milk chocolate got to have all the fun. Dark chocolate was stuck being the sensible, serious one,” she says. “So we made the dark chocolate we actually wanted to eat.”There’s a sentence that hides a lot of hard work. For McKay’s idea – adding “big chunks, big flavours, and the nostalgic combinations you’d normally find in ice cream, biscuits and puddings” to chocolate – has turned into confectionery business Fatso, on target for £1 million sales this year. Now on the shelves of Waitrose and Whole Foods, the brand launched in October 2022, online and through independent shops, cafés and hotels.But building a chocolate business when the cocoa industry is in crisis – with climate pressure, disease, ageing trees and years of underinvestment in West Africa, where the majority of the world’s cocoa is grown, plus rising energy, transport and packaging costs – has been understandably intricate.
