At the edge of the world, everyone disappears in the winter. The tourists leave the glacially cold lochs, pristine beaches, and the cloud-scraping mountains to the brave few who live there all year round. It’s an odd place to open a luxury chocolate shop: the most north-westerly point of the British mainland, under a sky so untouched by city lights that you can see the Milky Way. But chocolatiers Paul Maden and James Findlay wanted a challenge, and in Balnakeil Craft Village – between the village of Durness and the wild splendour of Cape Wrath – they created one for themselves.
As remote as their chocolate haven is, at least 40% of Cocoa Mountain’s customer base is from outside of the UK, by virtue of the fact that these are the tourists who visit the beautiful north Highlands. “People will walk in and say: ‘You’re famous in Italy!’ Or they’ll say they’ve come all the way from New York to visit. I think visiting us is quite special. Then they all go back home to wherever they are, whether it’s America or Germany or Australia, and for us Facebook is the only way we can keep in touch with those people.”
For Maden and Findlay, both in their 40s, chocolate was never the life plan, but it was always the great love. “As a kid I was obsessed with Willy Wonka,” says Maden. “I loved the whole chocolate factory idea and all the magical things that you can make. The more you know about chocolate making, the more you realise that Roald Dahl had a really good insider’s take on how to make it.”
In 2006, after years of working in dreary Glasgow offices, in IT departments and universities, their passion for chocolate making became their golden ticket out. “We wanted to try to make a living in a nice part of the world. But there were no other job opportunities, so we had to do it ourselves. It was as simple as that,” says Maden.
The village they chose, Balnakeil, was an early-warning base that was abandoned by the army before it was used. Then, in the 1950s, early hippies moved in and filled it with artists. “Part of the attraction to the place was that all of our neighbours would be painters or potters or glass-makers or creative in some way,” says Maden. “We thought there would be a really good creative spirit. That’s what gave us the courage to take the leap.” They found a semi-derelict building, then poured their life and chocolate into it.
The result of that leap is Cocoa Mountain, a chocolate shop located two-and-a-half hour’s drive from Inverness airport, the last hour of which you’ll spend blindly hoping the single-track road is the one you were supposed to take. “You really do feel like you’re on a different planet, let alone in a different part of the world,” says Maden, who has not grown bored of the glorious landscapes that gave his business its name. “It feels magical.”
Cocoa Mountain has made itself worth the trip by using the freshest, most unusual, and completely local ingredients. It starts from scratch: fresh Scottish raspberries are used to create that raspberry taste, and you’ll find no artificial flavourings anywhere near the kitchen. “When we began, there were fewer than 10 chocolatiers in Scotland and now there are almost a hundred. We’ve had half the world’s chocolatiers to come see us as well, to figure out what’s so good about us.” As for which of the many local whisky distilleries they’ve chosen to fill their delicious truffles – that’s a trade secret.
But making good chocolate was never going to be the challenge: Maden and Findlay are so obsessed with their art that they would do it whether their livelihood depended on it or not. That’s how it started, after all: as a hobby. The true challenge was in making a new business work so far from the city, in a remote place where the tourist trade is so drastically controlled by the seasons. But it’s not as quiet as you would think in the middle of nowhere – Maden says people travel hundreds of miles to come and visit.
“Our business has become a bit of a destination,” he says. “So you might say it’s quiet, but in the past 10 years, because of the business, I don’t think I’ve ever met or spoken to so many people in my life. We don’t really ever feel quiet, although we’re in a very remote area. You can have thousands of people and you wouldn’t know they were there, because there’s so much space to absorb them. But they all come and meet in Cocoa Mountain for a cup of coffee, or a whisky, and some delicious chocolate.”
One of the reasons Cocoa Mountain’s online presence has to be so strong is because, in the depths of winter, the internet is what keeps the business running. The opening hours shrink like the sunlight, and so does the foot traffic. While Cocoa Mountain might see hundreds of people daily over the summer, in the winter it’s more like four or five. It’s then that the focus of the business shifts from face-to-face to mail order: it keeps the shop open all year round, and the staff of 20 employed (the business has been so successful that it has opened a second shop in Dornoch, on the east coast).
But, according to Maden, the primary reason for Facebook is a connection with their people. “I think we would have had quite a big hole missing in our souls, simply because for those winter months we just don’t have the opportunity to interact with our customers too much. We enjoy the dialogue with our customers and with our supporters online, and it’s actually an enjoyable thing for us. I think, genuinely, we’ve built quite a large following online through Facebook, of people who see us as being part of their lives as well, in a funny sort of way. We keep it very friendly and it’s a way for us just to chat and keep in touch. On that level alone it’s been really nice to have.”
