How Important is Chocolate Packaging for Craft Chocolate Makers?

Before ever tasting a craft chocolate bar, I was hooked. It was the packaging. I still vividly remember the República del Cacao chocolate bars my friend had gifted me.

The packaging of the chocolate was telling me a story. The design took me to Latin America, where the cacao was grown and turned into chocolate.

The more makers I discovered, the more amazing designs I noticed. Each maker with their own unique style. It was more than just the design of the chocolate bar packaging, but also the feel of the packaging, the narrative on it, and the mold of the chocolate.

How Important is Chocolate Packaging?

The craft chocolate market is becoming seriously competitive - as craft chocolate continues to grow in popularity, newer chocoholics are becoming indecisive of what maker to try. If you browse our collection of chocolate bars, you will discover artwork each with a unique and compelling story. 

We made a four-step process on how an average chocoholic decides on purchasing a chocolate bar.

Design

When browsing a collection of chocolate bars, it's the packaging that sets itself apart from other brands.

Feel

When the chocoholic picks up the bar, how does it feel? The right texture of the packaging can go a long way. If your chocolate is quality, should it not be packaged in quality packaging? This step is missed during e-commerce shopping.

Story

Every craft chocolate maker and bar has a unique story. It can be sometimes found on the chocolate bar, and this is the opportunity for the maker to pitch it and tell the chocoholic why they should choose their bar over others. From the chocolate making process to the unique flavours of the bar. Writing compelling copy is crucial. 

Taste

If the design, feel and story all line up, the chocoholic will try out the bar. Ultimately, it's up to the taste of the bar to determine if the chocoholic will repurchase the bar and try other bars in the maker's collection.

Chocolate Packaging with Kathy Johnston from Mirzam Chocolate

Mirzam Chocolate is inspired by the maritime spice route that took merchants around the world to buy delicious spices. They have selected cacao plantations located along this historic trail (Vietnam, Indonesia, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, India, and Cuba) to create their single origin chocolate bars. 

Their bars are beautifully hand wrapped and are designed to reflect the maritime spice route Arab merchants took and the stories they told. It's a beautiful reflection of the companies story with the fusion of Arabic culture. 

To help us understand the mindset of a craft chocolate maker, we asked Chief Chocolate Operator Kathy Johnston to contribute her thoughts on the importance of craft chocolate packaging. 

What are your thoughts on the importance of packaging for Craft Chocolate bars?

The packaging is extremely important for any food product for the practical purposes of protecting the food and providing customers with detailed information about the product inside. For craft chocolate, we have a more considered battle, as we all have to use packaging to also help the customer to more deeply understand the difference between mass market and a craft product, as well as to somehow give a little gift-ability, as many people like to gift craft chocolate.

What is Mirzam's process from selecting a design to wrapping the paper?

We don't really select designs, as we work with artists to develop each piece - but the process starts with historical research into the details of the spices we are using, or the area of the spice route we are focusing on. From there we will search for a suitable artist and see if they are interested to work together!

Mirzam has collections of chocolate bars, "Single Origin Bars", "Spices Bars", "Monsoon" & "Winter in Morocco" what stories are you looking to tell with the packaging for each collection? 

Winter in Morocco is a great example here, as we were creating recipes that explored the history of trade in North Africa, and ended at the Marakech souqs or markets. We worked with a talented artist, Aziza Iqbal, who specialized in Islamic patterns and tessellations - and she explored patterns for our wrappers that are actually used in architecture in the same areas as the markets, and also infused her paints with the spices we used.

What is the most challenging aspect of creating high-quality packaging for Craft Chocolate Bars?

Besides Mirzam's packaging, are there other Craft Chocolate Makers packaging that is your favorite? 

So many makers have fantastic packaging. I love Dandelion Chocolate's labels and block-printed papers - they are really special.

If you are an artist and want to put your work on craft chocolate, Mirzam Chocolate is always looking for talented artists! Kathy mentioned to us what Mirzam is looking for from artists.

"We are looking for artists who create work by hand, and also are either based in the region or have a connection to the heritage of the ingredients we are using."