Australians have a knack for making delicious things even better – taking the best of the world’s food traditions and making them our own. In the early noughties, we looked around and realised our culinary landscape still lacked one important thing: premium, world-class, distinctively Australian chocolate. With that, our calling was clear. We set out to make the best chocolate anywhere, available to Australians everywhere. Chocolate that isn’t just a hit of cocoa, but a little dose of magic. Chocolate that tastes like an experience and feels like an art form. This was where Koko Black began. A mix of one part conviction, to one part curiosity, to one part craving for the finest couverture.

We ventured forth to Belgium with a hunger to learn and a hankering for ganache. We returned with the talented chocolatier Dries Cnockaert, and together opened the very first Koko Black store beneath the soaring arches of Melbourne’s Royal Arcade.

The rest is history, as well as delicious. Soon our little store couldn’t keep up with the demand. One store became fifteen, and our small-but-perfectly-formed collection of pralines became a range of 260 truffles, marbles, blocks, boxes and oh-so-silky hot chocolate blends test.

At Koko Black, we’ve always been committed to chocolate. In fact, we love our pralines so much, our founder Shane named his daughters after two of them. (Or maybe it was the other way round.)

But whichever way you look at it, chocolates have always been treasured like family members here. We even developed a special flavour – the Passion Praline – for the wedding of two team members who first locked eyes across a crowded tray of truffles.

At Koko Black we’ve learned a lot from the great European chocolatiers, but these days we’re loudly and proudly Australian.

We sing out our identity in our ingredients, with new tastes that include lemon myrtle, whipstick wattle, Davidson plum and green ants (yes, seriously).