Select your favourite things and allow us to make you the perfect Christmas Hamper.
All of our Christmas Hampers come with our unique price promise: "We always guarantee that the individual value of the gifts in your hamper will be equal to, or more than the price of your hamper"
We pack each hamper by hand at our chocolate shop in Ramsbottom, Greater Manchester & all our hampers come with free 1st class delivery. We make & send over 5000 hampers annually.
We also specialise in corporate hampers & gifts, & we offer generous discounts for larger orders.
If you are looking for a special chocolate gift this Christmas then may we recommend our solid chocolate pizzas.
Whether you fancy dark chocolate 'olives', white chocolate 'cheese' or chocolate fudge 'sausage' our gourmet chocolate pizzas are designed by you & delivered 1st class throughout the UK.
All of our chocolate pizzas are handmade on site & come in an authentic pizza box with your personalised gift message printed on the inside.
Starting at just £7.95 our chocolate pizzas are perfect for both chocolate & pizza lovers of all ages.
Last month saw The Chocolate Café awarded it's first major honour when we scooped the award for 'Best Family Friendly Dining Venue' at the Manchester Food & Drink awards. The awards provide a benchmark for excellence in the hospitality industry throughout Greater Manchester & this award helps to cement Ramsbottom’s reputation as a food & drink destination.
The above image shows myself (on the left) & Stephen Ryan (our café manage/chief chocolatier/general super hero) receiving the award from the Manchester Food & Drink Festival Director Phil Jones.
It is difficult to express just how proud I am of all our young team & the dedication they put into making The Chocolate Café the success it is. Also, to all our loyal customers whose ideas and advice have helped to shape and mould the business into what it is today - THANK YOU!
This award is even more special to us as it is open to public vote and is chosen exclusively by families from throughout the North West. We hope it will be the first of many as we are committed to constantly improving and offering a first class experience for everyone who visits our café and chocolate shop.
During my European chocolate trip back in September I was lucky enough to be given an in depth two day tour of the Zotter Chocolate factory in Bergl, Austria.
As someone who is relatively new to the world of chocolate (I have been making chocolate full time for 3 years & The Chocolate Cafe has only been trading since May 2008) it was a fascinating glimpse into the world of a true chocolate genius.
Josef Zotter & his team create wonderfully imaginative organic & fairtrade chocolates from the bean to the bar. What struck me from the moment I arrived is their attention to detail and their unfaltering determination to never compromise on quality. The staff, the raw materials they use & their state of the art machinery is all the best available. When I tried to engage Josef about how much everything had cost he simply shrugged off the question as if money was just a distraction from the art of making chocolate.
The best example I can give of this unwillingness to compromise is in the Zotter staff 'canteen'. Throughout the year staff numbers can vary from 50 to 100 due to the seasonality of the chocolate industry. Josef believes strongly that the staff should have access to healthy nutritious meals & employs a full time, trained chef just to cater for them. Everything in the staff canteen is organic (& delicious) & the majority of the produce is grown or reared on Zotter's own land or on neighbouring farms; they even mill their own flour!
Although I got the full behind the seens tour & was lucky enough to play a small part in the production process anyone can visit the Zotter factory, & thousands of people do. Even though Bergl is quite literally, in the middle of nowhere, the Zotter factory attracts over 150,000 visitors a year. The tour starts with a short film showing Josef on one of his visits to the cocoa farmers in Central America, where Zotter source most of their cocoa beans from. You are then free to wander at your own pace, following the journey of the beans, from their arrival at the factory, to the finished product in the Zotter shop. There is lots of opportunity to taste on route & freshly tempered chocolate from 30% to 100% cocoa content is readily available. As is a huge range of single origin labooko bars, filled handscooped bars & much more. In the hot chocolate cafe a working scale model of a Doppelmayr ski lift carries drinking chocolate directly to your seat!
As I was having my picture [above] taken with Josef we had to keep stopping as children would run up to him demanding a few moments of his time or an autograph. Josef was always generous with his time & always signed his autographs the same... 'to the sweet side of life!'
If you get the chance to visit the Styria region of Austria then I highly recommend a trip to Zotter.
Failing that you can get a flavour of Zotter here [video]
We have been serving Teapigs tea in our cafe & selling their retail packs in our shop since we opened in 2008. We carry the entire range of tea temples & we also wholesale them to other cafes & delis throughout the North West.
Teapigs was started in 2006 by Nick & Louise who both used to work for Tetley. The company now employs 7 staff & is based in Brentford (which is darn sarf!)
Teapigs pride themselves on using only the finest whole leaf teas, whole leaf herbs, whole flowers & whole berries. All the teas come in beautiful biodegradable silky purses called - Tea Temples. These wonderful little fellas combine all the convenience of teabags with all the flavour of great whole leaf tea.
Our favourite?... Well it is Chocolate Flake Tea of course!
Sweet Wine & Sunny Pig chocolate anyone? We are pleased to announce that from late August 2010 The Chocolate Café will be offering the entire range of Zotter Handscooped Chocolate bars online in the UK. Available from The Chocolate Café will be the entire Austrian range of over 70 varieties of Zotter's new Autumn/Winter collection of Handscooped chocolate bars. This is the first time the entire Zotter Handscooped range has been offered to the UK market. They will be available to buy online at www.chocolate-cafe.co.uk and in our chocolate shop, which is situated in the town of Ramsbottom, Greater Manchester. The bars will be available to buy online as a 4 bar tasting bundle priced at £12 (P&P is £3.95 or FREE for orders over £25). You can choose which 4 Zotter bars make up your bundle & they will be delivered in letterbox friendly packaging - meaning no trips to the sorting office if you happen to miss the postman! As always the stars of the new range are the unusual flavours created by Josef Zotter his 100 strong team. My personal favourite is the Sweet Wine & Sunny Pig. This intriguing combination consists of Zotter's fine bitter couverture (60% cocoa) with a ganache of sweet organic red wine mixed with lard (yes LARD!). This is complemented by a second layer of bacon brittle with roasted bacon crumble on almond nougat (all pig-related ingredients originate from the happy Sunny Pigs of the organic farm Labonca). For those less adventurous people who prefer their chocolate free of meat there are also a huge range of more traditional flavours including several which are vegan & lactose free. In the coming months we will also be introducing the rest of the Zotter Chocolate range including Labooko Bars, Drinking Chocolate Bars, Balleros, Basic Couverture & Cocoa Nibs. For more information on Zotter visit http://www.zotter.at/en/home.html www.chocolate-cafe.co.uk
Many of our fellow traders here in Ramsbottom are quite worried about the opening of the new Debenhams store at The Rock in Bury, which is only three miles away.
I am a firm believer however, that larger chain stores can sit along side specialist independents on our high streets. I am also all for large companies getting involved in the community and encouraging their employees to show a bit of entrepreneurial spirit.
However, I am a little put out by a request I recently received from staff at the new Debenhams store at The Rock in Bury, which opens this Friday. Staff from the stores wedding department visited us asking if we would be able to 'donate' some chocolates for them to put in their goody bags. The goody bags would be given to the first customers to visit the department in the new Debenhams in Bury.
Now it is not unusual for us to get requests like this one, and we frequently support other local businesses, church groups, charities and schools. Many of these opportunities come with some potential commercial gain, but this is often minimal and very difficult to quantify. More often than not we support these requests because they come from customers, suppliers or fellow traders who we know and have an existing relationship with.
I politely turned down the request from Debenhams as I feel that a company whose annual turnover of £1,187 Million, and profit of £115 Million (which is approximately 115 million times larger than ours) can afford to buy the chocolates to put in their goody bags.
We have been working with Austrian chocolate makers - Zotter Schokoladen - since Autumn 2008.
Zotter are famed for their unusual flavoured chocolate bars, and are Europe's only Organic and Fairtrade Bean-to-Bar Chocolate Manufacturer.
We retail a range of Zotter chocolate bars and drinking chocolates both in our Ramsbottom store and online. We also use a range of Zotter basic couverture to make several of our chocolates, cakes and savoury chocolate dishes in our café.
The company is the brainchild of renowned chef and confectioner Josef Zotter. The Zotter Chocolate Factory is located on Josef's parents farm in Riegersburg, Bergl. Complete with a Chocolate Theatre and Cocoa Cinema the factory is a major tourist destination, attracting over 140,000 visitors annually. For more info and to book a visit http://www.zotter.at/en/chocolatetheatre/chocolatetheatre.html
A few Zotter Facts:
Zotter employs around 100 people (mainly women from the surrounding region)
Zotter processes 250 tons of Organic & Fairtrade Cocoa a year from Nicaragua, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Panama, Bolivia and Brazil every year
160 tons of sugar from Paraguay, one million litres of milk from organic mountain farmers in Tyrol and 1200 kilos of genuine vanilla are also used
In 2006 Josef Zotter is presented with EUROCHOCOLATE AWARD in Perugia, Italy for the best European chocolate manufacturer
Zotter's new Autumn range is released in early August and will be available to buy in store or online at www.chocolate-cafe.co.uk
We love the quality and ethics of Zotter Chocolate and we are proud to be one of their premium UK retailers
