So, the plan was always to have a chocolate factory, where we would produce our chocolate and allow the public to experience it also, however, it took a long time to find the right location, even before 2016. But Grenada, or St. George’s, doesn’t have a huge amount of reasonably priced locations in the heart of town available. There’re spaces, they look upon great waters, however, one either cannot locate the owner or fathom the unrealistic rental prices that are asked for such locations. So, that was put to the side and my focus returned to the journey of how I was going to turn the cocoa that I had on my land into great tasting chocolate. That in itself was a big challenge on its own.

So, fast-forwarding, several years, I got to a point where I decided that to add another layer to the business, it would make sense to try and revisit the idea of finding a location to start producing chocolate in town. It was a decision between Grand Anse and St. George’s, locations at different ends of St. George’s. One was closer to the hotels and the other directly next to the cruise ships port. So, after a lot of research and deliberation, and back and forth, I decided upon St. George’s. And the search then continued again to try and find the ideal location. I stumbled across a few locations that seem to be the best, but once again, access to the owner, or other issues, political issues, behind the scenes that I wasn’t completely privy to, or just the cost became very prohibitive.

I stumbled across one location that was available to rent, had its pluses, but also had its minuses. However, I bit the bullet and decided to put the deposit down on the location and focused on transforming a previous office into a location where I could produce chocolate, and a cafe. A location where people could come and experience a myriad of experiences from producing their chocolate bar to tasting honey, to taste the different range of teas that we have in Grenada, all under the same roof. And then that was officially launched in October of 2019 as the first chocolate factory and the first location where you could produce your chocolate bar in St. George’s, in Grenada. And we had many great visitors, many bloggers, many travellers, many birthdays, local birthdays, were celebrated at the location.

And then COVID stumbled upon the world and us here in Grenada. And that bought an abrupt hold too many things. One, the initial ability to harvest cocoa, which was around the end of February, early March, when we were under complete lockdown and officials hadn’t put things in place to enable farmers to access their lands. And in my case, the ability to access my cocoa. So, a substantial amount of that cocoa was lost, unfortunately, which will impact us down the line. And then the borders closed, and then that was the real second impact of now not having any tourists on the island, compounded with the fact that the university, St. George’s University had sent all their students home, which was another key audience, or customer base, for us.

So, all of those elements coming together resulted in there being very little traffic, very little sales for us as a business. And this then rolled forward into the decision around how we would pivot and try and make the best of a monumental difficult situation. And that culminated in creating virtual experiences, one being an opportunity for many of the sailors who normally locate themselves on our shores during the hurricane season, those that were coming in from other islands were then faced with the challenge of having quarantine for 14 to 10 days before they were allowed on the island.

So, I can see the innovative opportunity to allow them to make the most of these 14 days that they would have at sea, unable to come on to land and offered the chance for them to participate in a chocolate-making experience, where, via video platforms, we would invite them into our chocolate factory virtually, give them a tour of the experience of how chocolate is made from the cocoa tree through to the chocolate bar. And then they would then have the opportunity to then customise their chocolate bar. So, they would choose different ingredients, and then they would see it being made. And upon chocolate being made and fully moulded and set, it would then get delivered to the local port where, when they were able to come to land later on that day, they would then be able to collect the chocolate bar and then consume it.

And that was an opportunity that we conceived and it worked to just bridge the gap and just to evolve what we normally would do, given the challenges that we were facing. But that in itself wasn’t enough. Due to lack of markets, or access to markets outside of the island, due to the lack of tourists, due to the lack of local market, due to everyone tightening their belts due to the pandemic, we were ultimately forced to have to close the chocolate factory at the end of July.