Chocolates By Tomes

Who We Are In March 2005 the first cornerstone was laid for Chocolates By Tomes when owners Richard and Lorraine bought the chocolate shop at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town. In that same year, Chocolates by Tomes opened a small factory from where our first range was envisaged, tweaked in the pursuit of taste and finally released in December 2005. With a total of 4 staff, our adventure began. Africa is the world's largest grower and exporter of cocoa beans, they are used by the top chocolate houses of Europe. Africa exports this valuable raw ingredient and re-imports the more expensive chocolate, to us at Chocolates By Tomes, this seemed wrong. So in 2007, we took a stance, we made the decision to make our own chocolate. We spent months researching recipes, learnt the theory, experimented with unconched ingredients to at least gather information on taste profiles. When we had gone as far as we could without a conch, we took a gamble, sold the shop, bought a conch and began experimenting with our recipes. We fiddled and fussed ensuring that we were always focused on bringing out the best of our African beans. We taste tested and listened to the feedback, added here, altered there until we felt we could do no more. Our Premium African Origin chocolate was launched at the end of 2007. The cocoa ingredients were solely sourced from Africa and the sugar from South Africa. Mission accomplished. In 2009 Chocolates by Tomes expanded and commissioned more chocolate making machinery. In January 2010, in order to accommodate the new machinery, the business moved to new factory premises approximately twice the size of the previous one. During 2010, having consolidated the manufacturing, we decided to return to retail and approached the Waterfront. What a joy it was to reopen a Chocolate shop in Cape Town and what an amazing reception we received, the Chocolates by Tomes team remains eternally grateful to our army of supporters.