Paul and Mike's 'Sichuan pepper and orange peel' chocolate bar was created for the China market.
A small craft chocolate set-up that started operations in 2019, Paul and Mike is a consumer goods brand under Synthite, a natural food ingredients company in Kochi. When Vikas Temani, founder and business head of Paul and Mike, took the flavour to an international chocolate show in Shanghai in the fag end of 2019, it was much appreciated.
The company had plans to export the artisanal chocolate bar to China. But a raging virus disrupted all of the best-laid plans of 2020, including Paul and Mike's China foray.
Temani did not give up. He sent off the fiery flavoured dark chocolate bar to the International Chocolate Awards in Taiwan as a contender. Last month, Paul and Mike's bar won a silver in the category of 'Dark chocolate bars with inclusions or pieces' along with the likes of Pacari from Latin America--considered the mecca for fine chocolates. Temani's already growing business got a booster shot with the win, and within two days of the news circulating, Paul and Mike saw a 100 per cent jump in website visits and home delivery orders in India.
Even now, a Paul and Mike chocolate delivery might take a week or two to reach its destination because of the growing demand for this farm-to-bar product. Sichuan pepper and orange peel is their most popular flavour.
"Pacari from Ecuador is so expensive in India and hardly available. I don't know anyone offering such high-quality chocolate in India. What Sula did with wine, Bira with craft beer, CCD with coffee culture, we want to do that with Paul and Mike and fine chocolate. We want to offer the quality of Pacari for the price of Lindt," says Temani, who moved to Kochi from Rajasthan some 10 years ago. Paul and Mike's many flavours include roasted almonds with pink Himalayan salt, dark Jaimacan rum, piedmont hazelnuts and dark Balkan rose, with prices varying from Rs 250 to 350 a piece.
Temani now wants to expand his roster of 36 flavours to a hundred more and include GI-tagged ingredients like cardamom and pepper, darjeeling tea and even "after school guava", a nostalgic ode to the cut fruit hawked on the roadside.
Paul and Mike was named so after a visit to cocoa farms in Latin America where two eponymously named farmers imparted a good deal of knowledge to the staff from the company, from harvesting to fermentation. In their first year of operation, Paul and Mike also roped in experts from Marou, a single-origin chocolate company from Vietnam.
"We have close to 15,000 cocoa trees. We take care of the entire process right from the farm to the finished bar," says Temani. Trained in chocolate tasting, he pitched the idea of Paul and Mike to his company board. He now plans to send his chocolate bars to more such world competitions beyond Asia.
