Set up by husband & wife team Andy & Claire Burnet, we are proud to have been making fine handcrafted chocolates since December 2002 in Dorset on England's south coast. We believe that we were one of the first, if not the first UK artisan chocolatier, to pioneer making fine chocolates, using locally sourced seasonal ingredients, including local honey, sea salt and alcohols, blended with ethically sourced, direct trade single origin chocolate, no additives or preservatives and all hand-decorated with natural colours.
The business has grown steadily over the years from our tiny beginnings to employ over 100 people in the UK, supplying not only our own Chocolate Houses and website customers, but also premium retailers and corporate clients for gifts. We have won over 140 national & international fine food awards for our creations - both chocolates & hot chocolate - and counting, so you could say that we are officially delicious! As you can see in the third photo, we have also won business awards, this one was for our championing of local food & drinks suppliers to use as ingredients in our chocolates!
By the way, the word Chococo comes from our original title for the business - The Purbeck Chocolate Company. Purbeck is the South East corner of Dorset where we are based. The word Chococo came from us playing around with the 'Choco' of chocolate and 'Co' of company - put the 2 together and you spell a word, Chococo!
Ben & Jerry's started in a converted petrol station in Vermount, we started in a converted hairdressers in a back street in the seaside town of Swanage! We turned the ground floor of the unit into our first tiny chocolate kitchen with a viewing window so that customers could watch us in action making all our chocolates by hand. We were determined to make all our chocolates ourselves and show our customers that we are real people, making real chocolates in a real place and that determination to "keep it real" is still the same for us today.
These pictures below show what our unit looked like back in 2002 - you had to go up the stairs to get to the shop! When we set the business up, our daughter was just 2 years old. The 2nd photo shows Claire with Lily 15 years later standing in the same spot - our very first kitchen became the shop in 2005 when we were able to to move the kitchen across the lane to the unit opposite the shop (the photo showing the doubled fronted windows & yellow wall) & move the shop downstairs.
Over time, our original unit in Swanage grew to encompass a Chocolate Cafe and we then opened our first proper Chocolate House on a High St in the cathedral city of Winchester in Hampshire in 2013. More Chocolate Houses followed over the years across the South of England, with most recently two in London.
Other initiatives over the years included launching our own range of Gelato in 2019 to supply our UK Chocolate Houses and moving to our current Chococo HQ in Holton Heath near Poole in 2021. This unit has the space to enable us to grow the business & supply our stores in the US too.
Claire & Andy outside our Chococo HQ in Dorset
In 2025 we opened our fifth Chocolate House (and our first in London) in West Dulwich, followed in early 2026 by opening another store in a Westfield shopping centre in East London.
Never ones to shy away from ambition, we've gone WAY further afield for our latest openings...New York City, no less!