In March 2005 the first cornerstone was laid for Chocolates By Tomes when owners Richard and Lorraine bought the chocolate shop at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town. In that same year, Chocolates by Tomes opened a small factory from where our first range was envisaged, tweaked in the pursuit of taste and finally released in December 2005. With a total of 4 staff, our adventure began.

Africa is the world's largest grower and exporter of cocoa beans, they are used by the top chocolate houses of Europe. Africa exports this valuable raw ingredient and re-imports the more expensive chocolate, to us at Chocolates By Tomes, this seemed wrong. 
So in 2007, we took a stance, we made the decision to make our own chocolate.  We spent months  researching recipes, learnt the theory, experimented with unconched ingredients to at least gather information on taste profiles. 
When we had gone as far as we could without a conch, we took a gamble, sold the shop, bought a conch and began experimenting with our recipes.

We fiddled and fussed ensuring that we were always focused on bringing out the best of our African beans. We taste tested and listened to the feedback, added here, altered there until we felt we could do no more.  Our Premium African Origin chocolate was launched at the end of 2007. The cocoa ingredients were solely sourced from Africa and the sugar from South Africa.  Mission accomplished. In 2009 Chocolates by Tomes expanded and commissioned more chocolate making machinery.  In January 2010, in order to accommodate the new machinery, the business moved to new factory premises approximately twice the size of the previous one. 

During 2010, having consolidated the manufacturing, we decided to return to retail and approached the Waterfront.  What a joy it was to reopen a Chocolate shop in Cape Town and what an amazing reception we received, the Chocolates by Tomes team remains eternally grateful to our army of supporters. On our quest for chocolate perfection, we looked once again at our chocolate and wondered how we could improve it? The answer was quite simple, go back to our roots, less sugar, more cocoa. We reduced the sugar in our milk chocolate from 37% to 30% increasing the cocoa content to a whopping 46%.  
Our white chocolate now contains only 42% sugar and is packed full of full cream milk powder wrapped up in cocoa butter, producing a creamy, sweet chocolate that is not overly sweet. 

Based on the sugared chocolate recipes, we also produce our own no added sugar milk chocolate and sugar free dark chocolate. 
As a team, the Chocolates By Tomes continues to look at trends and experiments with new ideas on our mission to delve deep into chocolate artistry.  “We like to think we do not rest on our past but move forward with innovation, uniqueness and passion for our world of chocolate.”