MEETING WITH SIMON DUNN CHOCOLATIER 16 JAN 2026

 

Our first meeting of 2026.. our twelfth year! To celebrate we welcomed local businessman and artisan made good Simon Dunn from High Lane, joined later in the session by his son Olie who is taking their efforts to the next level. They brought loads of goodies to try and buy, and we ended with far greater understanding of this magical product.

Simon is Stockport born and bred. He left school at 15, wanting to be a chef, but his mother arranged for a summer job for him at the local sweet factory (not Swizzels, Squirrel Horn, the one that burned down in 1989) where he was offered a training course to become a technical confectioner. That took him on a two month trip to Cologne, learning how to make chocolate, and he was hooked. By the time he was 21 he was making his own chocolates and selling them in the Chocolate Box shop in Prestbury, but it wasn’t the success he wanted. That’s when he realized that his chocolates, to be the quality he wanted them to be, had to be made by hand not by machinery. He’s been doing just that ever since.

At the time he was still working at the factory, so must have been putting in some hours! The bosses were prepared to back him with a 50% holding, but he wanted to be his own boss. It can’t have been easy, as a young husband with a baby son (Olie) to provide for. Round the shops he went with his hand-made chocolates and was taking £150 per week – this in in the 1980s when that was reasonable money. Problems arose as the little shops began to disappear, so he opened his own shops, remembered fondly by members in Wilmslow, central Stockport, Glossop.

We got the impression that Simon had tried everything to make his passion for chocolate work, including running very successful cafés on his own premises. “People would phone to reserve a slice of our chocolate cake,” he remembered. In each shop, staff were trained to make the chocs, but it was not a sustainable model when faced with unexpected challenges such as the weather – snow at Christmas, too hot at Easter; and Ann his wife had two bouts of cancer. Then the multiples moved in – Marks & Spencer near his Hazel Grove shop, Costa Coffee nearby – offering stiff competition.

So – he closed all the shops and decided to concentrate on making and selling from home, with only family members as employees, “stripping back to basics.” Still he really needed a retail outlet and found it near the Sainsbury’s site in High Lane, which he has renamed Chocolate Street. Whereas before “a lot of my time was taken up making coffee and cake,” now he decided to do the one thing he was superlative at: making chocolates. You can find them here: https://simondunnchocolates.co.uk/

In the long run he would like to franchise the name and product. When he tried putting a page offering franchises on an appropriate website, within a week came an offer from Menorca. At that point he discovered the perils of franchising: quality control. The challenge is to ensure the same high standard of wares, as they have to be made close to the point of sale in air-conditioned premises, with flair and extraordinary attention to detail. He’s willing to provide the training and share his own techniques, but all that takes time too. For some businesses who would like to be partners, a £300k one-stop machine might be a better idea, but then that would not carry his name.

We sensed a bit of a crossroads. “The business is growing too fast for me,” he admitted. Olie is running sidelines (“hustles!” he called them) including corporate events and chocolate parties, and his daughter is learning the trade. Regular big orders from football clubs help fill the lulls. But in the 10-week run-up to Christmas “it is manic!” and last time he had to close online orders early, to his own disappointment.

Olie shared with us a visit they both made to Ghana to see the origin of their chocolate. “A surreal experience,” he said, with a 10-hour jeep journey along dirt tracks until they arrived at the collection and processing plant. Growers are local people often with only a few trees, who bring their bags of cocoa pods in for sale The pods are a fruit, so the pulp must be removed leaving the beans which are “white and citrussy.” Over 10 days the beans dry out on bamboo mats and as the sugar in them ferments, they turn brown. A noble rot, you might say. The beans are then shipped to Belgium where the chocolate cake is made, from where Simon gets his basic product.

So, if he needs to expand to meet demand, how might he get the staff he needs? Club members engaged in a vigorous discussion. The Adam Smith solution is to split activity into segments so that Simon can concentrate on making the goods while others do the less skilled work such as packing and dispatch. These could be part-timers, seasonal workers. Paul Cox suggested using “school moms” – offering shifts from 9 till 2.30pm on school days, which would take care of the rush. The one thing Simon doesn’t need is permanent staff with all the oncost that would entail. Much of the rush work could be done off the premises such as in local church halls around High Lane. It would also help to phase out the wholesale side and only sell retail. He does not need to sell his product at a discount provided customers can find him by word of mouth and online.

But we all agreed he needs to raise his prices. It’s a premium product!! That would remove the large swathe of customers who don’t care so much about the quality but want a box of nicely packed chocs for a gift at £20. Indeed I think he needs to be braver – since our talk, he has raised prices, but there’s still room. On his website, 24 chocs can be had for £25.85. On Amazon, Patisserie Valerie is offering 12 Love Bite chocs for £31.95, The Gourmet Selection are offering 16 truffles for £24. And those will sell.  It’s always possible in quiet periods to make special offers to regulars on his mailing list, providing always that he can make a profit.

I fretted that the business needs a fallback position. What happens if another key worker falls ill? Or if there’s a fire at the Belgian factory? Or if war or pestilence make prices go through the roof? If you want to stay in business when times are tough, it helps to have deep pockets. And you can’t do that if you are underpricing your wares.

So, not a start-up this time: Simon has been in this business over 40 years, has faced many challenges and always survived. But as we get older we don’t want or can’t function as we did in our twenties. So solutions must and can be found.

My impression is that within this remarkable family chocolates are in good hands, and we will all get to enjoy them for years to come.