MEET YOUR {OUTSTANDING} MAKER - LUCID CHOCOLATIER
“When I got the call to say we won, it was a surreal feeling.”
Johnty Tatham aka Lucid Chocolatier jumped into our hearts when he took out the title of Supreme Winner at last year's NZ Chocolate Awards for Lucid Chocolatier 68% Port. As well as taking the top gong, Lucid won two categories and received 14 medals. The winning has continued in the 2023 Outstanding NZ Food Producer Awards with Lucid Chocolatier receiving a Gold and a Silver Medal. As he explains, hard work, focus and dedication are behind this recognition.
If you told Johnty Tatham five years ago that he would become a nationally recognised, award-winning chocolatier, he’d probably have thought you were crazy. However, after a few years of hard work, patience, plenty of practice and a global pandemic, that’s exactly where he’s ended up through this business, Lucid Chocolatier.
Bean to bar maker, Lucid Chocolatier controls the entire chocolate-making progress, from sourcing cacao, and roasting it, to grinding, winnowing, tempering and making.
Hailing from the Wairarapa, Johnty was interested in cooking from a young age. “I did a general cookery class in 2017 at WelTec and found that I was really interested in the desert side of things,” he says. “Then I did a course in bakery and patisserie and worked as a pastry chef for a while before getting a job as a chocolatier in Matakana.”
Upon starting his position as a chocolatier, Johnty quickly became fixated by the craft of chocolate making, falling in love with both the process and the product. While he already had a wide range of culinary skills up his sleeve, he decided it was time to specialise. “I found everything else too broad, and I wanted to be good at just one thing,” he explains.
Johnty was further inspired to pursue chocolate when he realised that a lot of chocolate arrives in bags from factories, causing him to question how pure and sustainable the practice was. “We would receive our chocolates in bags from factories, so after seeing that, I started doing research to see if there was a new way or business model where you could make chocolate from scratch,” he explains.
“I wanted to get involved with sourcing the beans, roasting them, and grinding them. I researched this on the side and began to draw up a business model thinking it could be a low-cost thing to get into.” he says. After talking to a few experts, Johnty decided it was time to go all in, and pulled the trigger on his business idea.
He packed up and relocated back home to begin saving money to make his plan a reality. However, within the first few months, Johnty noted he began to struggle with feeling isolated. “My parents live in a remote area of the Wairarapa, there are not many people there, so being in your early twenties out there, it took me a long time to feel confident,” he explains.
Johnty says that it also took a while before he felt like he was getting “good” at navigating general business and had the confidence that his chocolate products were even any good. Then, the pandemic hit, causing Johnty to feel even more isolated – all the while, battling imposter syndrome. But, Johnty’s persistence paid off, and slowly his project began to take off.
Sustainability is the core focus of Johnny’s business with a drive to ensure that all cacao for Lucid Chocolatier creations is sourced ethically. Johnty explains that he gets his beans from small groups of farmers in Peru. In some cases the Peruvian farmers are paid up to triple the Fair Trade standard.
This focus ensures that not only is Johnty getting high-quality, sustainably sourced beans, but also that the producers are fairly compensated for their labour and can support their families and communities. “The beans are organic, so ethics and quality are really important to me,” he says.
As for the chocolate, Johnty says that “we strive to make chocolate that has flavours which are exciting, without being too out there or off-putting,” meaning his delectable bars appeal to everyone.
Starting to feel confident in the offering of Lucid Chocolatier, Johnty’s begun devising plans for expansion this year. “We are planning a big upscale, and I will go from being a small home chocolate maker to production in a mini factory,” he says. “The goal was to establish ourselves as good chocolate makers and then expand into new areas. Now we’re recipe testing and developing new products like a spread, which will be like a gourmet Nutella,” he says.
Reflecting on his success at the 2022 NZ Chocolate Awards 2022 Johnty describes the success as simply ‘surreal.’ “After spending two years by myself chocolate making, I was so unsure if everything was going to work out and if we were going to make good chocolate. I honestly thought I’d botched everything up,” he laughs. “I wasn’t believing in myself, but when I got the call to say we won, it was a surreal feeling, I thought they were going to tell me we had been declined!”
Still buzzing from the win, Johnty says that he couldn’t have done it without the support of New Zealand’s wider chocolate-making community. “It’s tight knit, we support one another, we’re all in this together, it’s a great community to be a part of, we’re all so happy for one another,” he says. “I want to thank all the New Zealand chocolate makers who helped get me to where I am now.”
To learn more about Lucid Chocolatier or purchase some of the award-winning chocolate visit the website.