Published on 1st July 2024

Catherine’s Originals is a start-up that offers a classic chocolate selection box for vegans. Ambitious owners Catherine Dodd and Jamie Miller have established their own factory near Arundel, but their dream of making plant-based chocolates has been far from plain sailing, as AAH discovered… 

Catherine, where did this idea come from? 

It came about after a difficult couple of teenage years. Both my parents have been successful in business and always inspired me to achieve great things, but I never excelled academically and had to work very hard for good grades. During my GCSEs, I was hospitalised with symptoms relating to stress, which was tough for a 16-year-old. I decided against college and my parents supported me, as always. However, I spent the next two years in a downward spiral, isolating myself from friends and consigning myself to my room. One Christmas, all the family came round to our house, yet I had a feeling of not wanting to enjoy myself. Like many people, we always have tubs of Roses and Quality Street at Christmas for everyone to share. I‘ve been vegan since I was 12, so have missed out on that part of Christmas. However, that  was what inspired me to create the world’s first vegan selection box. I was going through a dark time, yet it led to a life-changing decision.

What was the first step?

I looked to see if there was anything else like it already on the market. Plenty of people were making vegan chocolates, but they were mostly luxurious, artisan products at a higher price point. I wanted to offer a classic selection box with familiar flavours at an affordable price. So, that’s what I set my mind to. I studied the shapes and sizes of chocolates in Quality Street and Roses, as well as the wrapping, branding and packaging, then started thinking about the name. My initial idea was Originals, but my dad and my boyfriend Jamie convinced me to adopt my name. We registered the business in April 2021 and spent the next six months searching for a chocolatier to help us make the products.

Jamie, when did you become involved?

I met Catherine while I was still at university. Catherine was aiming to sell her first selection boxes at Brighton Christmas Market and I helped her to find a chocolatier in Glastonbury who could teach us about production and guide us through the first batch. Catherine bought all the ingredients, but days before we were due to go, the chocolatier cancelled our visit! We had no contingency plan and didn’t know what to do next. Fortunately, Catherine contacted Vantage House, a catering equipment specialist based in Henfield. They had a kitchen used for machine testing and let us use it for a few weeks, recognising we were a start-up and needed help. We had no idea what to do, yet through trial and error we made 30,000 chocolates in three weeks, entirely by hand. Then all we had to do was wrap them! 

Why was wrapping them important, Catherine?

Everyone advised us against wrapping each individual chocolate, as it’s complicated. But I was stubborn, as my dream was to create a selection box like Quality Street with coloured wrappers. So, every night, I would take home a batch of about 3000 chocolates and stay up until the early hours with my mum, wrapping each one by hand. We did that for 12 straight days until we had 30,000 chocolates, enough for 800 boxes. We set up a stall at Brighton Christmas Market for three days and although it rained constantly, we sold out, which gave us huge encouragement.

What are your different flavours?

We started with 10 chocolates but soon dropped toffee, leaving nine. Bite Me Bails is a soft-centred caramel, Snap Me is made with desiccated coconut and Popped Cherry is our take on a soft-centred strawberry. We have a heart-shaped coffee truffle called Dangerously in Love, as well as Tease Me (honeycomb), Milky O’s (hazelnut praline) and The Cookie Muncher (cookies and cream). Heart Breaker has an orange and almond flavour and is named after a boy who broke my heart when I was a teenager, as he hated orange chocolate! Baby I’m Blue is totally original, with flavours of lavender and chamomile. They’re all different shapes so that vegans can experience the same excitement as everyone else at Christmas. All our ingredients are sustainably-sourced, backed by organisations including Fair Trade International and Cocoa Horizons, with the packaging recyclable too. We hope we can help set new standards in the industry by placing more importance on sustainability. 

Did you resolve your production issues?

During 2022, we sold selection boxes at farmers’ markets and set a target of making 20,000 boxes for Christmas. The greatest problems we have encountered relate to wrapping. Leading brands have modern machinery for each individual chocolate and they work quickly and consistently. We don’t have such machines and had no idea how hard it would be to find one that could wrap nine different chocolates. Failing to research this properly was the biggest single mistake we have made. We contacted factories across the UK but none could meet our demands. So, after making chocolates for Christmas 2022, we had no choice but to call on family once again and hand wrap every single one. It was at that point we realised that we needed our own factory if we were going to succeed in the long term. Then Jamie heard about an award that transformed our fortunes...

What was this award, Jamie?

To earn extra money during my studies, I worked for Deliveroo. During a delivery round in Horsham, where I live, I received an email about The Big Pitch, a Dragons’ Den style competition in which riders pitch a business idea to a panel of experts. So, I filled in an application about Catherine’s Originals. We filmed a video presentation which helped us reach the final, then cycled to Deliveroo’s headquarters in London to make our pitch to a panel including directors of well-known brands. We were amazed when we were awarded £25,000. The timing couldn’t have been better, as we had endured a run of bad luck.  

How has the brand grown since then?

In 2023, we put together a plan for the factory and reached out to potential investors. We found a small industrial estate in Walberton that was ideal for the factory and did most of the renovation work ourselves, with help from Catherine’s brother, William. We had further support from grants and schemes including Low Carbon Across the South East (LoCASE) that allowed us to buy new machinery. We needed training so that we could operate the machines, as we still had only 20 days of chocolate-making experience at that time. However, we still had to find a good wrapping machine. Scott Symmons became our first employee as we increased production, confident that we could find a wrapping machine somewhere. One manufacturer in America quoted us £1m, but eventually we negotiated a good price for a second-hand machine that we could just about afford. We found an engineer who adapted it to suit our needs and although it isn’t perfect, he has done a very good job. 

It must have been stressful, Catherine?

It was, as investors were beginning to doubt that we could achieve our sales targets. We had launched a website too and announced that selection boxes would be ready by 1 December, but as the day drew closer, we were not ready. But we pulled it off, even if two of the nine chocolates were too complex for our wrapping machine and went into the selection box unwrapped. By mid-November, I was selling at Winchester Christmas Market every day, while Jamie and Scott were in the factory shipping the online orders. We made 900,000 chocolates in two months and sold out, which was incredible.

Where did the extra demand come from?

Winchester market was great, but many more sales came through the website. A vegan influencer bought a box and posted about it on a vegan Facebook group with about 100,000 members. Suddenly, orders were coming in every few seconds. Those are the moments when all the hard work is worthwhile. It was a reminder too that I was not the only one longing for a dairy-free selection box at Christmas!  

You’ve now added another product?

Our Wonky Buttons are partly inspired by Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Buttons, as we wanted to offer a grab bag at a lower price. The bags have a mix of white and milk chocolate with caramel and cherry fillings. The buttons are imperfect in that they’re not quite circular, so they’re a unique product. We made a limited run and the bags sold out within two weeks.  

What are your ambitions for the business?

Our selection box is a work-in-progress and we’re continually adjusting the production process. Eventually I would love for Catherine’s Originals to become more than just a chocolate company. Businesses like Bournville and Cadbury’s helped to shape the community around them and that’s something I’d love to replicate with my values, which focus on the environment. Obviously, we’re at the beginning of our journey but in my mind, Catherine’s Originals will be so much more than chocolate; it could encompass restaurants, hotels and even a farm for rescued animals, reflecting my passion for nature. Whether or not any of that’s possible, only time will tell! 

WORDS: Ben Morris / PHOTOS: Alan Wright

Further information:

To order visit www.catherinesoriginals.com