About Time You Met: Doisy & DamBy Alicia Grimshaw

Childhood friends, Edward Smith and Richard Wilkinson set up Doisy & Dam together in 2014 – a superfood chocolate brand with a serious kick. All of their chocolate contain no hidden ingredients and are free from artificial nasties. We’re talking about delicious, great tasting chocolate bars. We sit down the chaps to chat all things chocolate:

For anyone who isn’t familiar with Doisy & Dam, can you give us a little back story on why you decided to set up an organic chocolate brand? 

Ed: Richard and I have always been obsessed with food, and become obsessed with superfoods; people couldn’t understand why foods that are good for you always tasted like hell, so we started to incorporate superfoods into all sorts of products and discovered that we were making some delish chocolate – so we went with it!

What made you choose chocolate over other sweet treats? 

Richard: We are constantly experimenting with all sorts of sweet treats, but as chocaholics we wanted to start with what we knew.

Who was in charge of creating the different flavours? 

Ed: Mostly our friends and family, we created all sorts of flavours together but it was down to the family and friends community to pick the superstar bars

Richard: Nowadays Anna (Frost) is now our product development maestro, she’s our in house Chemical Engineering geek!

Did you try any flavour combinations that didn’t work at all? 

Ed: We tried bee pollen and hazelnut but we couldn’t find organic bee pollen anywhere because bees have a tendency to fly to all sorts of flowers organic or otherwise.

It’s very brave putting quinoa in a chocolate bar, did you ever feel that maybe it was too much of a bold move? 

Richard: As long as we get people to try it, we’re confident in our flavours, we don’t think it’s bold, we think it’s delish!

What’s your favourite flavour from the collection? 

Ed: My favourite flavour is the Coconut and Lucuma dark chocolate bar

Richard: Date and Himalayan from the new milk chocolate range and Maca and Vanilla from the dark range for me!

Would you ever expand and try your hand at creating other products? 

Ed: Absolutely, we love experimenting – we do it for fun not just for work and we have all sorts of products in the pipelines including a cold brew cacao, which is a caffeinated chocolate-based drink which is super-delicious and super-healthy!

What are the secrets to making a good quality chocolate bar? 

Ed:

Step 1: Start with the highest quality ingredients you can find

Step 2: Nail your flavour and texture profiles

Step 3: Use your friends and family as guinea pigs as much as possible

What’s your favourite chocolate dessert? 

Ed: Pip & Nut  and Doisy & Dam peanut butter cups with Pip & Nut coconut and almond nut butter, that stuff is bananas.

London’s best coffee can be found at: 

Richard: Browns of Brockley

One of your favourite restaurants in London is: 

Ed: Song Que on Kingsland Road.

Richard: Elliot’s Café in Borough Market.

London’s best breakfast can be found at: 

Ed: The Breakfast Club in Soho for their Huevos Benny.

Richard: B Street Deli for their Avocado and Prosciutto Flatbreads