Five minutes with award-winning Chocolatier David Greenwood-Haigh

Award-winning chocolatier David Greenwood-Haigh is owner of mobile business Coeur de Xocolat. He has seen huge success over the years, from his savoury chef days to his now obsession with all things chocolate.

We sat down with David to find out more about his journey…

Where are you from?

I was born in Pontefract, but I now live in Wakefield.

How did you get to where you are and what did you do before this?

I started off in restaurants and soon found that he had a passion for food, then went onto catering college and worked my way up in the food industry, from hotels to catering. I eventually went to work for Unilever and I sold to chefs before heading to Divine Chocolate, where I was for 11 years.

Working at Divine Chocolate gave me the opportunity to go to Ghana and see the cocoa process. That was when I caught the chocolate bug, as I had always been more savoury than sweet before that.

As well as creating delicious chocolate, what else does your business do?

I also host chocolate workshops all over the world, as well as teaching in universities and catering colleges. Being mobile has given me freedom to work all over Yorkshire.

Yorkshire has a fantastic network of businesses as well as a brilliant confectionary history, from Pontefract with liquorice to Wakefield with rhubarb, and being a mobile business gives me the freedom to meet and work with others.

How is the chocolate industry changing and what have been the big changes in recent years?

The chocolate industry is changing rapidly. Chocolate consumers are becoming fussier about what they have and they are demanding cleaner labels. They want to know where it is from and what is in it.

People are also becoming more adventurous with their tastes, and a lot of the trends, which were trendy years ago are becoming popular again. One of the biggest trends last year was salted caramel, but that is actually a very old recipe that has come back.

What is your personal favourite chocolate?

My personal favourite would be salted caramel chocolate. However, because of where I am from, I also like rhubarb truffles. I enjoy using ingredients which have something to do with the heritage of the area.

In a time when we are as a society trying to move towards healthier eating, what is the future of chocolate in an increasingly healthy society?

I think when we start to look at the health angle, it comes down to cutting down the sugar content. However, dark chocolate is quite healthy and there are lots of other medical facts around it.

But, the second biggest ingredient in chocolate is sugar, so the higher the cocoa content, the better the chocolate will be for us as there will be much less sugar in it.

Miniature bars are also becoming much more popular now too, with people swapping an 100g bar of chocolate for 50g. Not only is it cheaper, but with finer chocolate, it is more about test and trailing different flavours before committing to bigger bars.

What are you hoping for the future?

My main aim for the future is to help people realise that chocolate isn’t just this sweet thing, and that it can be used in a savoury context. I am keen to show people that chocolate has been around for four and a half thousand years, and there is so much more to it than meets the eye.