Kernow Chocolate

Kernow Chocolate began almost by accident. In 2004 Alex Shapland and his wife Jayne, along with daughter Nicola and her husband-to-be Andy, opened Kernow Harvest, a Cornish food and drink shop in Wadebridge, and quickly realised that surviving as a retailer meant making their own products. They settled on chocolate, and the company proper was set up in 2005, working from the family farm and selling first at farmers' markets and food shows before building up wholesale accounts with farm shops, delis and tourist attractions.

Production outgrew the farm by 2015 and moved into a former RAF St Eval Ministry of Defence building near Wadebridge, which is now Cornwall's largest artisan chocolate factory, employing more than twenty people from the local community. The business is still entirely family-run - Alex, Jayne, Nicola, Andy, and the next generation, Phil and Vicki, between them cover management, finance, operations and production. The factory has its own shop, a cafe and a viewing area where visitors can watch chocolatiers working by hand, and the range runs from bars and single-origin Macondo chocolate to gifts, novelties, Easter eggs and baking ingredients.