The Publication For The Grocery Trade

Chocolate patches for cocoa connoisseurs

With Easter almost upon us, those Belgium champions of all things chocolatey have been focusing their thoroughbred knowledge of delicious brown gold on exploring the creation of some 'discerning little patches of self-control.' The more suspicious minded among you might well be thinking, "how on earth could any pioneer of premium orientated chocolate possibly benefit from dabbling in the field of sweet craving control?" The answer is simple, a small matter of quality over quantity! Brits as we all know are the most prolific serial scoffers in Europe, munching their through a staggering £4.8bn worth of chocolate - that's roughly 10.25kg of melty heaven for every man, woman & child. Alas, whilst the UK's enthusiasm for the chunky currency remains unrivalled, our 'quality control' taste buds still lag some way behind those of our more discerning European counterparts. The good news is that the UK's current lack of upmarket chocolate appreciation isn't a genetic thing, more of an unfortunate hangover from history. In Britain chocolate for the masses wasn't available until the late 1850's some hundred years later than Spain, France, Belgium and little Luxemburg. In reality the UK are simply playing catch-up! The thinking behind these cunning little patches is that the wearers of these vanilla-scented patches will find consuming chocolate with less than 73% cocoa content quite hideous. According to UK spokesperson, Simon Rees-Collison, "as with our extensive range of wellbeing chocolates, we are once again showing that pleasure, health and a small smidgeon of science are inextricably linked. It is very much the NewTree vision that the bad taste of sub-standard chocs will soon be a thing of the past." NewTree UK Simon Rees Collison Tel: 01635 528 233 David Heath Tel: 01635 520544 www.newtreeuk.co.uk