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[title]Beautiful things are happening in Bermondsey. Specifically, at Lucocoa – a chocolate factory with a big heart. Eight years ago, Amarachi Clarke founded the business when she realised that the chocolate-making process – starting with the farming of cocoa beans – was broken. Not only that, but that the average bar of chocolate just doesn’t taste as good as it could.
And so Lucocoa was born, the name being an amalgamation of the three ingredients in the brand’s chocolate. Each bar contains organic lucuma, a Peruvian fruit, organic coconut sugar (as opposed to refined sugar) and cocoa beans. And each bar is, of course, incredibly tasty, whether you’re sampling the 73% Belize, 70% Dominican Republic or 60% Haiti. Visit the website and you can read all about where and how the beans are sourced, their flavour profiles, and the positive impact that paying the farmers a proper wage has had on their communities.
Lucocoa’s story is uplifting and inspiring – but in a city where every corner shop is filled with a kaleidoscope of brightly coloured chocolate bars jostling for your attention, how do you stand out? And in such a crowded space, how do you cut through the noise and get people to listen?
Naturally, social media has been key for Lucocoa. But it’s not enough to post endless videos of luscious liquid chocolate – there’s so much more that Amarachi Clarke wants the world to know. Luckily, there are more tools than ever at the disposal of entrepreneurs and creatives to help them stay ahead with their marketing. We asked Amarachi to trial Adobe Express: an easy-to-use app that exists to make it simple for anyone to make professional content effortlessly. Not only is it filled with millions of royalty-free Adobe Stock images, video and audio assets, fonts and backgrounds, but it has also integrated Adobe Firefly’s Generative AI capabilities, which lets users create custom text effects and custom images using just text prompts and users can change the format of their creations to suit multiple platforms with just a few clicks. Pretty handy? You bet. Editing social content couldn’t be easier; with Adobe Express small-business owners like Amarachi can easily plan, schedule, preview and publish standout content, all from one app. But most importantly, it gives her more time back so she can channel her creative juices into the important stuff, like making sure the chocolate tastes good.
We caught up with Amarachi to learn more about her chocolate revolution – and to find out how Adobe Express is helping her remain agile in marketing her business in such a competitive space.
Amarachi, can you tell us about the inspiration behind Lucocoa?
‘The first thing is taste. The chocolate we eat, day in, day out, isn’t really what chocolate is supposed to taste like. Chocolate is like wine and coffee – different regions create different flavours. I wanted to explore that and get people to understand that chocolate is more than what we think it is.
‘The second thing is ethics. There’s a huge problem within the cocoa supply chain around child and slave labour. I have a background in international development; I used to be a project manager at UNICEF and was also the vice president of the National Union of Students, so I understood campaigning and injustices around the world. Ten years ago, I became injured and looked into how chocolate can be a healer. It opened up this big Pandora’s box as I realised that things aren’t what they’re supposed to be. So I thought, how do I change this? These big chocolate companies don’t want to budge on what they’re doing because it’s too profitable. So, I wanted to show them that it’s possible to have a transparent supply chain where there’s no child or slave labour within it. And that’s how we started. All our ingredients are organic – we pick the best beans, and we work with farmers to get great taste from them.’
How have customers reacted to Lucocoa?
‘We have a lot of people who are true converts; regular customers who buy the same chocolate every week, and online as well. We’ll also have customers who come into our shop and buy a small bar. They walk away eating it and then turn around and come back to say, “I’ll have to get the big one!”.
What challenges have you faced in trying to change how people think about chocolate?
‘Most people think that fair trade is enough. I don’t condemn fair trade, but it’s not enough. If you’re paying the same prices that some of these big places are paying, it’s barely enough for adults to work on the farms. We pay more than fair trade because we have to ensure a living income for our farmers. It’s all about sustainability. If we want chocolate to last, we’ve got to make the farms sustainable. It’s not just about looking for these labels – it’s about asking bigger questions, and that’s one of the first things I came up against, trying to communicate that.’
‘Another challenge is differentiating ourselves on a visual level from chocolatiers. We’re not chocolatiers; their first ingredient is chocolate, but ours is a cocoa bean. We’re making chocolate from scratch. We’re going through a process of roasting beans, crushing beans, taking the shells off, grinding the beans for three days, taking them out, letting it cool, tempering it.’
How has social media helped you to show this to your customers?
‘At first I worried that no one would want to see that process. But it turns out that people really want to see chocolate being poured! I used to be a bit more snap and go, but we now have a creative director who looks after our social media. It’s become a lot slicker. We used to just chase likes, but we’re now really comfortable with who we are, and we’ll talk to you when we have something to say, not to make content for content’s sake.’
How is Adobe Express going to help you with your marketing?
‘One of the features that I’m obsessed with is removing backgrounds. A lot of the time we get asked for images (and we have amazing images!) but they need white backgrounds. So in the past I’d say… let me just take that whole photo again. But looking at the Adobe Express desktop app, I’ve been playing with photos from the catalogue, and you can remove the background in seconds! It allows us to have cleaner images rather than having to go through the whole photoshoot again.’
‘I love that we can make our own posters, too. There could be a bar on the table and you can erase stuff in the background, and just focus on that bar. Then, we can put copy in and a cool textured background behind it. And the stock photos! I had a scan through the stock photos of chocolate that we could cut sections from to use. It’s so useful – it’s one of those tools that I think could even fool our creative director!’