16 July, 2015
If
ever there is an excuse to eat an entire bar of chocolate
meant for sharing, it’s with the birth of Doisy & Dam, the
London chocolate company that is about to change the way you see
your favourite sweet treat forever. Dreamt up by childhood best
friends Ed Smith and Richard Wilkinson, Doisy & Dam fuses
indulgence with a hit of superfood goodness. The two came up with
the idea to infuse chocolate with precious, nutritious ingredients
after leaving their corporate jobs in the City of London. A twosome
that quit their jobs to become superfood Willy Wonkas? We were
hooked straight away. “We just wanted to run our own thing
together, whatever that was. We discussed every business idea you
can think of. Some were absolutely ridiculous,” Ed explains. “We
both came to a point in our careers where we could either carry on
and get really serious, or break out together.”
Given, superfood is a bit of a grey area nowadays. So when we
spent the afternoon with Ed and Richard, we put the question of
what defines a ‘superfood’ to them. “I think it’s a marketing word,
really,” Richard tells us. “It’s gotten a bit out of control and I
don’t think people really know what it means any more. That’s why
we just try and look at foods that have extremely high nutritional
value, rather than something that is just labeled a superfood. We
want the ingredients to actually make a difference to the
product.”
So why go down the healthy chocolate route we ask, as we begin
the backbreaking task of sampling their new range. “We wanted to
work with something tangible. It was always going to be a product
that we could create and touch and hold,” Richard says. “We’ve
always been obsessed with food. We both knew that if we weren’t
interested in the product we were selling then it would never
work.”
Their flavours are robust, each one packing a punch of rich chocolate and interesting ingredients
Doisy & Dam bars are spreading quickly. They can now be
found in Whole Foods, Planet Organic and Ocado. Coconut &
lucuma, mulberries, chia seeds & spirulina, and goji &
orange are just some of their blends. Against all the odds, these
bars actually do taste amazing. (If you’ve ever tried spirulina,
you’ll understand what we mean.) Their bars never have more than
eight ingredients and have a 70 per cent cocoa content which, as
Richard explains, means there is “a lot less room for sugar and
fat.”
If you’ve sampled a Doisy & Dam bar already, you’ll know
that their flavours are robust, each one packing a punch of rich
chocolate and interesting ingredients. “What we try and do is take
a superfood, a texture and a flavour. That is our formula, if you
like.” They tell us, as we try out their brand new line of
nutrient-rich milk chocolate bars, which will be released in
September. All this was top secret, of course, but you can look
forward to a healthy take on salted caramel chocolate…
The non-couple twosome aren’t stopping at chocolate bars,
though. They plan on releasing a range of healthy/indulgent snacks
and drinks including cold and hot brew cacao. “Any indulgent food
you can think of, we want to turn into a healthy snack, basically,”
Richard explains. “I think a huge movement is happening in the food
world. People are making pre-existing products better for you. It
isn’t going away and doesn’t feel like a fad.”
Design-wise Richard and Ed stand out from other chocolate brands
for their unbridled use of pastels. Each packet of Doisy & Dam
chocolate is inspired by Godfrey Street in Chelsea, where the
houses are washed in dreamy crayon colours. “I think people are
sometimes surprised that we’re men!” they say, as we take a jaunt
down the famous street. “People often think we’re a couple. We’ve
had a few articles refer to us as ‘Edward and Richard Smith’
too.”
Through our six-to-seven-bar haze, we asked the boys whether it
ever gets a bit much, this chocolate game. Richard laughs, “There
are some times when we’ve been up at the factory packing bars, and
I dream that I’m doing that over and over again. It’s the most
torturous nightmare. I wake up and have to force myself to think
about something other than chocolate.” With similar distress in his
voice, Ed says, “You know when you play Tetris and you do it too
much, and then when you sleep it’s just going round and round in
your head? That’s what I get with the chocolate.”
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