Brontie Maria Ansell, founder of Brontie & Co made the transition from a corporate solicitor to an entrepreneur manufacturing vegan chocolate- we caught up with her to talk about what prompted the change in career and why the quality of the ingredients that go into her prodcuts is so important.
Brontie Maria Ansell
What made you want to give up your job as a corporate solicitor and go into manufacturing vegan chocolate?
When I was working as a law lecturer and a corporate solicitor in a firm and I couldn’t find a way to make it work for me, I just felt like I was in the wrong place, a square peg in a round hole. Some of the work was interesting, but I didn’t think I could ever make a difference, and for me that meant I could never really feel fulfilled or happy in my work. I am really creative and adventurous, I knew I needed something that would challenge me every day.
You made a lot of sacrifices to do this- so please tell us about your ‘year of sell everything’.
Initially it was really tough. We were heavily reliant on my salary and as a family, we had to really think about the future and how we might lower our outgoings. After some long deliberations we decided to downsize our lives. They were only material possessions after all. It took a fair bit of planning, but we did sell pretty much everything, including our house and cars! We started again with a few clothes and some things we really cherished. But we were mortgage-free and we had cash to spare. We moved in to a tiny rental house and just saved like mad.
Are you vegan? If so please can you tell us about your journey? If not - why vegan chocolate?
Around the same time we were selling everything, my father was diagnosed with a hereditary version of coronary heart disease and went through a series of operations. After researching the disease, I decided to overhaul our eating habits. I am really passionate about food, but with the diagnosis I felt it was really important to teach myself sustainable healthy eating habits. For me that involved becoming vegetarian, giving up dairy and reducing added sugar to an absolute minimum. We are approaching veganism slowly, as a family with children its really hard to have a rigid approach to anything, but we are almost always vegan when we cook at home, we just don’t take a fixed approach to it as a lifestyle choice.
As for chocolate we are massive chocolate lovers and I knew that no healthy eating drive would succeed without chocolate on the menu. I believed if we were going to have chocolate it needed to be much better than what was currently out there. There was no ‘healthy chocolate’ available at the time. I knew it needed to be ultra-dark, really low in sweetener, and contain no dairy or unnecessary ingredients. I felt so passionate about this, but couldn’t find anything that worked for us. So I started making it myself! I watched endless videos and went for a training day. By the third batch we were all hooked on it and we turned away from the sugary confectionary industry overnight.
Why do you only use raw cacao from Ecuador? What are the benefits of sourcing it from there?
From the start I was obsessed with finding the best quality, most ethical cacao. I wanted to be able to make a difference with every purchase. I knew that if we could source raw materials with full traceability it would guarantee the ethics and heritage of the cacao. After a lot of searching and testing we managed to get a trusted supplier relationship with an importer and the raw ingredient was organic, fair trade and ethically sourced. In the beginning we only made single origin Ecuadorian, but we our just expanding our range to include Peruvian chocolate as we have found that these two countries produce simply the best tasting chocolate. We currently use Peruvian Criollo and Ecuadorian Arriba National cacao, these are two really special strains of cacao.
What made you want to avoid traditional sweeteners in your products? What are your thoughts on sugar?
The turning point was my dad’s diagnosis. I honestly believe that added sugar is the largest dietary problem of our age. It is a slow killer and obesity levels are rising rapidly. I think that it is nearly impossible to avoid all sugar found in our food. However I personally found that by switching to a plant-based sweetener my blood sugar does not spike and I don’t experience any cravings at all. In the company we are always mindful about added sugars. We never use white refined sugar and we are committed to using only low GI/GL sweeteners and only using a minimal amount to create a great tasting product. Every product is sweetened with plant-based, all natural sweeteners such as lucuma, coconut palm or carob.
You give a high percentage of your profits to charities so which ones have benefitted so far and why are they so special to you?
Whilst setting up Brontie & Co I knew that our focus was not only to source our ingredients ethically but also make sure the business is a committed to giving back to the local community and helping those who need it the most. It was important to me to have a community feel to the company. As a result we donated 15% of our net profit after taxation at the end of our first year to causes that touched our hearts. This year our recipients were Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres). This charity is just a wonderful example of the kindness of human beings in some of the worst war zones in the world and they need all the help they can get. Locally we donate to Sustainable Sussex, a chilli farm run by volunteers to help adults with learning disabilities gain new skills. I volunteered there for a summer and it really helped me get some perspective on the world. We still buy our chillies from them for our chilli chocolate! We also commit to paying our staff above the national living wage.
What advice do you have for other mothers and wives who feel their work-life balance is not existent?
I think women have a really hard time believing in themselves. We are forced into competition in many areas of our lives and from a really early age. This sets us up for a lifetime of self-doubt and never quite believing we are enough in whatever we do. If I could give another woman any advice it would be to find that nugget of self-esteem inside herself and grow it, whatever that takes. It also helps to remember that not everyone’s opinion of you is valid or carries the same weight!
Why is Mother Nature our best restaurant and dietician?
It’s accepted that as a species we haven’t really changed in 150,000 years – we are still exactly the same homo sapiens that roamed wild on the plains and rain forests of the earth. Archaeologists have proven that we would have foraged every day for berries, seeds, fruit and veg. We wouldn’t have eaten any processed food or had access to much meat at all. So if our bodies are the same today that they always were, then perhaps we just need to eat whole foods that are readily available in nature and avoid anything that is highly processed, sugary and full of unnecessary chemicals. This might help us combat a few of the inflammatory diseases that we are facing today.
Why do you think the vegan market is growing so rapidly?
I think many people are pretty sick of the highly processed, chemical laden food market. There is so much education around food now as you can Google literally any ingredient – companies cannot hide what is going into our food. I think veganism and the lighter version of going ‘dairy free’ is attractive because it is often based on a diet of whole foods, vegetables and fruit. People who try this kind of eating can see major changes pretty quickly such as weight loss, better skin, more energy, etc., and they are then prepared to stick with it.
What is next for you?
In terms of our short-term goals we want to develop our children’s range to include 4 woodland characters with stories around their adventures and introduce a couple more flavours. On a larger scale we want to become a leading producer of vegan free-from chocolate, hot chocolate and healthy coffee alternative drinks in the UK and Europe. We have just been named Runner Up in the FedEx Small Business Grant UK competition, and we are planning to use this additional cash injection to expand and grow internationally.
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