Lori Whinn had a great idea. She wanted to produce high quality, hand-made chocolate that was unlike any other on the market. Chocolate with a bit of pzazz that combined high quality, quirky flavours, unusual ingredients and distinctive packaging.

Chocolate with Pzazz

She was producing her high quality chocolates from her home and things were going well, but Lori knew that she needed to invest money into marketing and branding to grow her business further. After some unsuccessful meetings with banks who would not lend the required funds – Lori approached us to help grow her chocolate making business. We worked closely with Lori, helping to write her business plan so we could help her as part of our Start Up Loans programme.

Not long after receiving a Start Up Loan from us and revising the branding and marketing of her products, Lori won contracts with John Lewis and the National Trust. This allowed her to move from her kitchen and into a small food processing facility and take on a member of staff to help with the increased level of demand. Coco Pzazz now also available in Canada, the Netherlands, Italy and Norway through artisan food distributors.

Lori and her expanding team.

Everyone at Robert Owen Community Banking loved working with Lori on this project, partially because Lori is such a lovely person to work with, but also because we got to sample some of her fantastic chocolates (purely for research purposes). If you’d like to sample some of Lori’s chocolates for yourself, visit her website http://www.cocopzazz.co.uk.

That’s how our Start Up Loan helped Lori, if you’re interested in how a Start Up Loan could help you and your business, see if you’re eligible and how much you could borrow here.