About Us

Harris & James is a Suffolk based, family run business making artisan bean to bar chocolate, bakery products, gelato and coffee. Our award-winning chocolate is hand made in small batches, from cacao sourced direct from growers and cooperatives to ensure complete transparency and unmatched flavour. Only 1% of chocolate globally is made to these standards and at Harris & James we are proud to have gone the extra mile in this and in all we make.

 

Our History

More than two decades ago in the heart of the market town of Beccles, on the Suffolk/Norfolk border, my parents, Richard and Amanda Harris-Godfrey, opened a cafe in a prominent Grade II listed building. Twenty-three years on and Twyfords cafe continues to grow from the ethos of quality produce and friendly service.

From a firm foundation, my father added small batch coffee bean roasting back in 2013 under the name of Harris & James, this planted the seed to what would follow. Early in 2015 my father and I visited an exhibition in Paris and witnessed a small-scale chocolate bean to bar process, from roasting the bean to the finished chocolate. Once we tasted that example of chocolate, we couldn’t quite believe how good it was and, on returning from the exhibition, using my father’s coffee roasters experience, we began to prepare cocoa beans before grinding to make our finest batch of chocolate. Encouraged by the results, a decision was made to invest into becoming an accredited chocolate maker. As we enter our fourth year, we say goodbye to our small chocolate workshop to move to larger newly equipped premises. The new site has allowed us to further develop our range of handcrafted products made with love and incredible attention to detail by our small team of expert chocolatiers.

Our Chocolate Workshop

Back in 2015, we started our journey into making chocolate at our small site in Suffolk, using a coffee roaster and a household wet grinder. Heartened by the initial results, we later launched our chocolate range in three of our retail outlets in 2016.

To ensure continual improvement and innovation, we plan each year ahead accordingly. Our aim from the beginning and continues to be about bringing quality chocolate back to the consumer and to make it special - how chocolate should be - not be a product driven by accountant-led confectionery giants.

Most of the world’s ‘chocolate’ is loaded with sugar – flip over the next bar you see and check. At Harris & James, we do this a little differently. Hence, our mantra for making chocolate has always been and always will be ‘More Quality Cacao, Less Sugar’. High quality cacao will always be our main ingredient, even in milk and white chocolate. At Harris & James, this will never be compromised.