Dairy-free chocolate not just for vegans, says HiP Chocolate
13 Jul 2023 | Happiness in Plants (HiP) Chocolate
Vegan chocolate is “massively growing” and appealing to wide range of consumers seeking healthier, more planet-friendly options, according to Alex Kelsey, head of sales at Love Cocoa and HiP Chocolate. He explains how non-vegan consumers are reducing milk and how Happiness in Plants (HiP) chocolate naturally evolved as Love Coca employees began adopting oat milk.
This is Missy Green from CNS Media at ISM 2023.
I'm here with Alex from Hip Chocolate.
So, Alex, tell us about the inspiration behind making a vegan chocolate.
Yeah, hip chocolate, so we couldn't really find any vegan chocolates on the market that tasted any good or that we'd wanna sort of share with our friends.
So we tried a lot of different recipes, tried coconut milk, tried rice milk, oat milk kept coming back as the one that, you know, everyone's putting in their coffees, it's the creamiest of all of them.
So we thought, you know, why not put it in chocolate, and yeah, launched hip about 2 years ago.
It's just selling really since then.
And this brand is sort of a spin-off, right, of Love Coco?
Yeah, that's it.
So Love Coco, founded by James Cadbury, which started about 7 years ago, and yeah, in the office, as I say, everyone was having oat milk in their coffee, we thought, you know, let's launch a new brand aimed at a slightly different audience, sort of younger audience, and then hip is a great name for it, stands for happiness and Plants, and, yeah, it's spin-off, it's like you say.
Would you consider this type of chocolate a lifestyle chocolate?
Lifestyle, I guess, you know, the packaging itself is a little bit lifestyle.
I guess we are trying to be a lifestyle brand in terms of going after the young consumer, putting a lot of effort into trying to find people like that way, so in a way, yeah, I'd say so.
And where is this chocolate available today?
At the moment we're stopped in Sainsbury's in the UK.
It's probably our biggest listing.
You can also find it in loads of independents in the UK.
We've started entering a few different markets, so we're over in Ireland as , a little bit in Germany, other places, but , opening a shop in the EU very soon.
Do you have any other insights about vegan trends within chocolate?
Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's massively growing, it's not just, it's not vegans that are, are driving that change.
I think a lot of people er are looking to cut down on milk.
They're looking for something that's maybe slightly better for you than a, a standard bar, and something like Hip delivers on that, it's slightly less sugar than a, a milk chocolate bar.
People are also concerned about the environment, so there's less carbon dioxide that goes to making a bar of hip versus a normal bar, and that's driving a lot of people's choices, er, and a lot of those brands are happily vegan as , so.
OK, thank you very much.
