Chococo aims to make waves in U.S. market
The chocolatier opened its flagship NYC location on May 2.
UK chocolatier Chococo is making its first move into the U.S. market with two New York locations this spring. The flagship opened at 500 Madison Avenue on May 2, with a smaller outpost already open on the Upper East Side.
Bringing its signature Chocolate House concept over the pond, Chococo is aiming to offer an experiential retail experience that’s part confectionery and part café. Guests can explore more than 100 varieties of handcrafted chocolate, shop artisanal treats, then stay for a signature hot chocolate, gelato, or pastry made with local partners including Abbotsford Road Coffee, Smor, and Il Laboratorio del Gelato.
To learn more, we reached out to Claire Burnet, co-founder, Chococo.
Liz Parker Kuhn: We are a U.S.-based magazine—can you please talk a bit about the Chococo brand’s beginnings?
Claire Burnet: My husband Andy and I set Chococo up in the seaside town of Swanage in Dorset on England’s south coast, back in 2002. It was a career change for us both, inspired by my love of fine chocolate, which in turn was inspired by the time my parents lived in Belgium back in the 1980s when we would visit local chocolatiers making their chocolates on site using fresh ingredients.
We started as just the two of us in a tiny 200-square-foot kitchen in a back street tempering our chocolate the traditional way on a marble slab to make all our chocolates by hand in small batches. Over the years, we have built a team and have moved to ever larger premises—now we have a 15,000-square-foot HQ unit near Poole in Dorset and employ over 100 people across the business in the UK. Whilst we now have more machines to help us keep up with demand, we still craft many of our bonbons by hand and all our creations are hand-decorated.
We would say that we have been crafting great taste with greater purpose since 2002 as we established Chococo with several guiding principles which still hold true today—to operate a more sustainable, equitable trade model working directly with partners producing fine single origin chocolate in country of origin (which keeps more of the value chain in country) for us to work with; to lead with the bean so that our chocolate is lower in sugar than comparable alternatives; to use local, seasonal ingredients where possible; [and] to be palm oil-free and only use natural colourings to craft truly delicious chocolates, all presented in plastic-free packaging.
Our focus on craftsmanship and sustainability is core to our DNA, and we are proud to have won 138 national and international fine food awards to date which are testament to the quality of our creations. In the UK, alongside our nationwide mail order service and supply to premium retailers, we currently operate six Chocolate Houses across the South and in London, with plans to open more later in 2026, which combine retail and café elements, so our customers can enjoy our world of fine chocolate in whatever form they prefer .
LPK: What kind of products do you make and what are your most popular ones right now?
CB: We craft a wide range of chocolate creations:
- Filled flavored bon bons that customers can choose from our display cabinets in our stores to create personalized selection boxes
- Single-origin bars and bars studded with flavors such as roasted cocoa nibs, crystallized ginger, or crunchy honeycomb
- Novelty shapes for the young and young at heart, including ducks and robots
- And gifts with a uniquely British twist, including our chocolate fish and chips, seasonal collections and hot chocolate flakes.
The most popular ones vary by time of year! Overall though, if I was to pick one of our most popular annual flavors, it would be our multi award-winning Dorset Sea Salt Caramel chocolate. We make the caramel at our chocolate kitchen in Dorset, add a touch of local sea salt from the Dorset Sea Salt Company based further along the coast, and encase it in a thin shell of our award-winning signature 72% dark chocolate from Ecuador.
LPK: What made the brand decide to expand its brick and mortar stores to the U.S.?
CB: Our investor partners, who came on board in 2024, want to expand our business globally and it was decided that the right first international market for us would be the U.S.
LPK: What made it choose New York for its first market?
CB: It felt right the best location for our brand in the U.S.—it is such a cosmopolitan, vibrant city with a population who clearly love chocolate given the number of other premium chocolate brands there already!
LPK: Can you please talk a bit about the brand’s commitment to sustainability?
CB: Our commitment to sustainability has been core to our brand since we started back in 2002. In the traditional trade model, most cocoa travels a long, hidden path from the millions of farmers in West Africa (where 70% of the global supply of cocoa comes from) through complex supply chains to "Big Chocolate" multinationals processing cocoa beans into chocolate, including couverture chocolate for companies like ours to work with. We take a different route, working directly with our partners in Colombia and Ecuador, where together we craft bespoke chocolate from exceptional beans, ensuring a positive impact at source and flavors that are uniquely ours.
We believe that making chocolate where the cocoa grows keeps more of the value where it belongs: with the farmers and their communities. By producing at origin, we have full traceability from cocoa farms to Chococo, to the point that our signature dark chocolate, made for us by Martinetti in Ecuador, is crafted with fine heritage Arriba Nacional cocoa beans from a single estate, Hacienda Zoilita in the Los Rios region. Martinetti has long term relationships with local farmers working with them to help preserve remaining Arriba Nacional production in face of increasing pressure to grow modern hybrid varietals which are great for productivity but not for fine flavor. Luker in Colombia has embedded long term sustainability programs empowering farmers to improve yields whilst protecting their local biodiversity around their farms. By sourcing their chocolate, we directly support all of this work. Further, we have developed bespoke signature couvertures that are unique to Chococo with our partners—our 47% Colombia origin milk chocolate and our single estate 72% Ecuador dark chocolate, both of which have won Great Taste awards.
LPK: Can you talk a bit about the “experiential retail design” as the heart of your Chocolate House concept?
CB: We want all our Chocolate Houses to be welcoming spaces to enjoy discovering our world of fine chocolate, Chococo-style. We believe in letting customers choose their chocolates to create truly personalized gifts, so we always include a loose display counter as well as offering a selection of pre-packed selection boxes. Hot (or iced) chocolate is also a hero, and at Chococo you can choose from a variety of origins ranging from a very sweet Blonde caramel white chocolate to Ecuador origin 100% with no sugar at all! For anyone who wants to keep it vegan, we offer plant milks as well as dairy and the option to choose a variety of flavors and cream of course.
In New York we have partnered with Abbotsford Road Coffee for specialty coffee, artisan bakery Smor, and Il laboratorio del Gelato, for the full Chocolate House experience.
LPK: What’s next for the brand in 2026?
CB: The opening of our Chocolates Houses in New York is just the beginning. We’re exploring new sites in Q4 and we've got some exciting projects in the works including the launch of our website with U.S nationwide shipping, a corporate B2B platform, new flavors, new collections, and more.
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