James Le Compte from To’ak Chocolate

Sam: James, welcome to Beyond the Inbox. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us.

James: It’s a pleasure. Thanks for having me, Sam.

Sam: Can you tell us about your background and how you became involved with To’ak Chocolate?

James: Yeah, I’d love to.

My background is really in social entrepreneurship and social enterprise.

I’ve always had a strong interest in chocolate from a young age, like a lot of us do as kids.

My mum used to say that I had chocolate antennas because, wherever the chocolate was hidden in the house, I made it my mission to find the new secret hiding spot.

I’ve also always had a strong interest in fine food and in having some sort of impact through the work I do, particularly around social or environmental impact.

Having spent a number of years in both the private sector and the not-for-profit sector, I was excited to get involved in a new way of looking at chocolate.

It’s an industry that is really overdue for a bit of a shake-up in terms of the way it’s designed and the impacts it has, both negative and positive.

The opportunity to be involved in a luxury startup brand was a fantastic way to connect my skills and passions.

Sam: To’ak Chocolate has a distinctive brand story that sets it apart from other chocolate makers.

How do you go about crafting an engaging brand narrative that resonates with consumers?

James: I think the starting point for us is authenticity.

We go to great pains to share a story that is genuine, that we are passionate about, and that is also bigger than us.

That’s where we’re able to draw connections to universal values that people are naturally drawn to.

In a practical sense, that could be the work we do with farmers.

We’ve been working with the same 13 cacao farmers in coastal Ecuador for the past 10 years, and we have a very close relationship with them.

They enjoy tasting the chocolate that comes from their cacao.

It isn’t a foreign product to them.

It’s something we take great excitement in sharing with them each time a new edition comes out, and we taste it together as peers.

When we learned how special and unique the cacao was that we were working with, we decided from the beginning to go beyond Fairtrade.

In our case, we pay between three and eight times the Fairtrade price.

We also have a strong commitment to doing business responsibly.

We don’t want only to maintain the status quo through sustainability. We want to give back and regenerate the environment.

We’ve done things such as genetically testing the cacao we use and setting up a genetic bank.

That project has finally had some early success.

We’ve been able to offer high-quality cacao genetic material to farmers as a way to support regenerative agriculture and increase their income.

Sam: I want to touch more on sustainability later.

One thing that got me when I was researching this episode was the hook: “the world’s most expensive chocolate.”

That pulled me right in, and I became curious about that world.

Is that a label the media gave you, or is it something you cultivated in your marketing?

James: It’s a great question.

From a marketing angle, as a brand and as individuals behind the brand, we’ve never given ourselves that label.

We’ve made a point of that.

We also would never say that we make the world’s best chocolate.

If somebody else says that about us, that’s wonderful to hear, but it’s a personal and subjective opinion.

Interestingly, we did some workshopping within the team around the topic because the idea of “the world’s most expensive chocolate” sat a little awkwardly with us.

None of us come from the world of luxury, and none of us would be the target customer for the brand.

But luxury has a really interesting aspect to it.

It allows you to hone a particular craft and give value to something that has heritage, culture, and history embedded within it.

It’s at the opposite end of mass production and consumerism, and those concepts really spoke to us.

At the end of that workshopping exercise, we arrived at the idea that we make the world’s most valuable chocolate.

It’s valuable because it delivers value to the farmers we work with, it delivers value to the environment, and it delivers value to consumers.

For us, it isn’t about being the world’s most expensive chocolate.

I definitely can’t deny that the phrase can be leveraged from a marketing perspective, and we’re happy to ride that wave.

But for us, the real interest lies in the value we’re able to create.

Sam: I want to ask you more about your ideal buyer.

When I go onto the website, I see chocolate at the high end and the lower end, and I see corporate gifting.

Who are you appealing to in your marketing?

James: When we started To’ak, we looked at the fine-wine industry, the spirits industry, and fine food.

We looked at how a raw material could be converted into something very valuable through a combination of skill, artisanship, storytelling, and branding.

The audience that speaks to tends to be connoisseurs—people who really want to learn the details behind the brand.

They want to understand the nuances of the product’s origin, the particular ingredients, and the craft behind its production.

That tends to be our ideal consumer: someone discerning, curious, and inquisitive, particularly people with an existing interest, passion, or hobby in one of those areas.

Whether it’s fine wine or a particular category of spirits, we have people who really geek out on mezcal and want something that extends their mezcal experience.

They understand the world of craft or fine chocolate because of the emphasis we place on sourcing the raw materials, the way we handle them, and the way we communicate it.

Being able to pair your favorite mezcal or host an intimate evening with friends around single-malt whiskies and pair them with To’ak chocolate—that tends to appeal to our ideal target customer.

We also appeal to a lot of gifting occasions.

That ranges from corporate gifting, where we offer co-branding and personalized gifts, to more individual gifts.

We do almost everything in-house across the product journey: harvesting the cacao, producing the chocolate, and designing and crafting the packaging.

Gifting tends to be a major part of the business.

Sam: I was on the corporate-gifting page, and I think you’ve done an outstanding job.

I really liked seeing the other brands you’ve worked with in the past. That adds a lot of social proof.

How has your marketing strategy evolved over time, and what has been most successful?

James: It’s a really good question because we still feel as though we’re in startup mode.

We’ve had to take quite a nontraditional approach to building a luxury brand.

On one hand, we’ve tried to stay authentic and true to the luxury-brand playbook.

On the other hand, we haven’t had the resources to set up a flagship retail store or build something like a wine château or a chocolate experience that people can come and visit.

We really leveraged the digital channel and continue to do so, but that has evolved significantly since we started.

At the beginning, we were driven by creating an immersive digital experience online, but it wasn’t necessarily built with the user experience in mind.

Although it might have looked beautiful as an artistic piece, it wasn’t necessarily optimized as a shopping experience.

That was probably our first lesson.

We started to get success with digital marketing when we turned our attention to the potential of email.

We had collected subscriber email addresses over the years, but we had really only seen email as another communication channel.

When we had bits and pieces of news to share with our membership or database, we would send ad hoc communications.

It wasn’t until we properly recognized the opportunity for email to be a driver of revenue that things changed.

That was a key turning point.

Since then, we’ve had another evolution in the website design.

We’ve added subscriptions, upsells, and a range of different strategies to make the experience seamless.

Sam: When someone lands on the website for the first time and joins your email list, I assume they go through some kind of welcome flow.

James: That’s right.

It was an interesting exercise for us.

Rather than using a traditional welcome series where people receive different offers and the sequence is very commercially focused, we thought about how we could make it more conversational.

We wanted to give personal insight from the co-founders and farmers and create an emotional connection with the brand before we did any selling.

Sam: What do you want a first-time buyer to do?

Is it better to bring them in at a lower price point and then upsell them to a more expensive item?

I see the chocolate and the packaging on the website, and I love what you’re doing there.

Can you tell me more about the ideal customer interaction?

James: In terms of the ideal interaction, we offer quite a wide range of products—around 40 different SKUs, which is a wide range for a small team.

That gives customers the opportunity to continually try something new.

It has been an important part of our growth because there is an element of learning and encountering something for the first time.

We like to recreate that experience through chocolate aged in different casks, for example.

You might have tried our single-malt-whisky cask-aged chocolate, and then become interested in a new release that is gin-cask-aged chocolate.

That creates a slightly different angle on the experience.

We tend to have customers who try a whole range of products.

At the top end, we have products that are perfect for special occasions, wedding gifts, anniversaries, and similar events.

Then we have products that are more suitable for a dinner party, a small self-gift, or a personal treat.

It gives people the opportunity to engage with the brand on different occasions, which we find important.

Sam: I also see the option to subscribe to a recurring delivery.

Is subscription something you plan to double down on, or is it something you’re currently testing?

James: We started promoting it at the beginning of this year, so we’re still learning.

We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the uptake.

We’ll be launching a loyalty program shortly, and we’ll try to incentivize subscriptions through that program.

For most brands, subscription is a goal because it creates that beautiful set-it-and-forget-it type of revenue.

Chocolate is also something people generally don’t grow tired of.

If you enjoy the product, it’s a nice option to receive that little surprise in the mailbox once or twice a month.

Sam: Which channels are working well for you right now?

I know you mentioned word of mouth, but what else is performing well?

James: We use a post-purchase survey, and it has been really interesting to dig into that data.

It has been extremely valuable.

For any brands that aren’t doing it, it’s such an easy thing to implement and can provide so much value. I highly recommend it.

We’ve also had a lot of success through PR.

We’ve been able to do that in a fairly cost-effective way because we have a talented in-house team that handles communications, content, photography, video, and all the assets media outlets, bloggers, and content creators need.

Rather than simply putting out a story and hoping for the best, if you invest upfront in creating content that makes the content creator’s job easy, it tends to have a higher success rate—particularly when that content is high quality.

We put together a media kit where journalists and other content creators can browse a wide range of organized, high-quality photos and content.

That has been a successful strategy for us.

We’ve also had success with bespoke corporate-gifting orders.

What we offer tends to be a refreshing alternative to the traditional bottle of wine that gets gifted.

Sam: Regarding PR, I’m always curious: when you land high-quality backlinks from major media outlets, is there any correlation between getting those links and that exposure and attracting a particular quality of customer?

James: It’s an interesting question.

In the past, we’ve tried to predict spikes in sales based on upcoming media coverage we knew was coming, and we’ve probably been right about 50 percent of the time.

On one occasion, we were thrilled because we negotiated with a National Geographic cable television program to create a piece about To’ak and the conservation work we do in Ecuador.

They flew a team out to Ecuador—a cameraman, a host, and everyone else involved.

It was a whole production for about six or seven minutes of content.

We were thrilled and thought it was going to take the brand to new levels.

But it was a bit of a non-event commercially.

It has been fantastic to say that National Geographic came and made a mini-documentary about our conservation work.

That builds brand equity and delivers a lot of other benefits.

But compared with that, we once had a really short clip on, I believe, CNBC, and that went crazy.

We received around three months’ worth of orders in 24 hours.

It’s quite unpredictable.

Even if you don’t get an immediate commercial return, this content usually lives on for a long time and may have a very valuable long tail.

Sam: It’s fair to say there’s also so much more than simply acquiring customers from that kind of exposure.

One example that comes to mind is author James Clear.

I heard him talk about how he wrote an article that was picked up by a major media outlet.

They invited him onto their show for a segment, and he then asked if he could return a year later when his book was live.

He came back, and there was a knock-on effect from that first action to something far greater later.

I’m sure National Geographic and those other outlets provide so much social proof for the brand, along with many other benefits.

James: Indeed. I agree one hundred percent.

Sam: Something else I wanted to ask you about is the blog on the website.

There are different types of articles, including one comparing To’ak with MrBeast’s chocolate.

Are you creating content specifically to target keywords, or is it more of an educational tool for potential customers?

James: I’d say, if you apply the 80/20 rule, around 80 percent of the content is educational and based on things we’re genuinely interested in ourselves.

The other 20 percent is more informed by what people are looking for online and gives us the opportunity to provide content that addresses a question or series of questions from an informed perspective.

For the blog, we decided on a few high-level categories that represent the values we want to express through the brand’s voice.

That’s how we plan content around those topics.

We do some work with an SEO agency, but a lot of it is simply content we believe in and find interesting.

Sam: We’ve talked about several channels—email, PR, content, and others.

Which are you doubling down on in 2023?

James: In 2023, we’d really like to focus on tapping into our existing customer base.

There’s always that expression that it costs several times more to acquire a new customer than it does to generate another sale from an existing one.

With the changing dynamics of digital advertising, there’s a lot more competition.

Targeting is more difficult, and the returns aren’t as strong as they used to be.

We’re focusing heavily on email marketing because it’s a captive audience.

Those customers are already familiar with the brand, and we get very good open rates and responses.

The new piece I briefly mentioned is the loyalty program we’re planning to launch shortly.

When we designed the loyalty program, we didn’t want to simply reinvent the wheel.

We wanted to do something a little different.

We’ve identified a number of other Ecuadorian brands.

We strongly identify with our origins as an Ecuadorian luxury brand, so we looked for other Ecuadorian brands producing high-quality artisanal products.

We’ve negotiated to offer products from their collections as rewards that loyal customers can redeem.

Again, it’s about discovering new brands, products, and experiences—not only within the To’ak world, but within the broader ecosystem of values we identify with.

Sam: I want to touch on sustainability because time is running quickly.

As the brand grows and expands its reach, how do you maintain the balance between growth and sustainability?

James: It’s a really good question.

We set the business up as a benefit corporation.

In many respects, it is similar to a C corporation or S corporation, but it has stated social and environmental impacts embedded in its constitution.

We’re guided by that as a business.

But we also recognize that it can be difficult to do both things at the same time—to grow while keeping our eye on sustainability to the extent we would like.

Partnerships are really important to us.

At the end of the day, we’re experts in farming and harvesting cacao and creating chocolate experiences.

We know a lot about conservation and creating social impact in a smallholder-farmer context.

But there are organizations whose teams know far more in certain areas.

When we can enable their work, that allows us to scale the company and scale our impact at the same time.

It comes down to those partnerships.

In conservation, for example, we work with Third Millennium Alliance.

Together, we developed a regenerative-agriculture project for farmers around a nature reserve who previously relied on things such as illegal logging or poaching.

They’ve been supported in regenerating farms that had become monocultures or had been cleared.

With To’ak and Third Millennium Alliance, they plant high-quality cacao within a biodiverse farming model.

They plant not only cacao, but also food crops and other native plants.

That brings back biodiversity—the plants, birds, insects, and everything else that needs that diversity.

The farmers are also able to generate a strong income from cacao and other fruit crops.

That has only been possible through partnerships.

Sam: James, this has been a fascinating conversation.

I’m really glad you’ve been able to pursue a childhood passion while giving back at the same time.

Where can our listeners learn more about To’ak Chocolate?

James: They can go to toakchocolate.com—T-O-A-K chocolate dot com.

We have a really exciting range of cask-aged chocolate, single-origin chocolate, and exciting products under our new Alchemy category.

I’d encourage everyone to go and check it out.

Sam: Perfect. We’ll put those links in the show notes.

James, thank you again for taking the time to join us, and all the best in the future with To’ak Chocolate.

James: Thanks, Sam.