It was a bright yet blustery day in Wellington, the sun was shining but there was a distinct nip in the air, typical for late winter when the early hints of spring are just beginning to make themselves known. I was heading to Lyall Bay. Not to surf, although conditions were good. No, I was off to meet Kate Necklen, the creative mastermind behind the magic that is Wonderland Chocolate.
This dreamy, joy-inducing little vegan chocolate factory is a relative new-comer to craft chocolate here in New Zealand, bursting onto the scene in May 2023. But they are already making waves! And what better place to do it, than in the plant-based-cuisine loving, surfing community that is Lyall Bay?
It seems that throughout her life Kate was always on the path to chocolate, long before taking the leap and launching Wonderland. Starting out at the Central Institute of Technology after high school, Kate studied Hospitality, taking cheffing qualifications to compliment her studies, and being appointed the coveted role of Head of the Chocolate Appreciation Society. The latter may or may not, she admits, have come about since she used to regularly eat her body weight in milk chocolate, even since she was a child.
Other than regularly eating chocolate and being the head of, what could arguably be called a college’s best student society, Kate later took a degree in Marketing with Mandarin Chinese at Waikato University, before being one of the lucky few selected for a graduate training programme with Unilever. It was this gradate programme that paved the way for a hugely successful marketing career taking her from Auckland to Sydney, and then onto London working on brand development for new and existing brands and food businesses. As a result, she tells me, she’s pretty familiar with the process of working out what people are going to like, and how get the market research done. But eventually the tug of New Zealand grew too strong, and with the birth of her twin boys, the bittersweet decision was made to return home.
After leaving London, and Unilever, Kate spread her wings in finance and tourism, but it wasn’t long before she was once again cooking up a storm in her own kitchen back in New Zealand on her downtime. Fascinated by food and the culinary process, she could often be found joyfully conjuring up creations in her own kitchen. Then at some point in the midst of covid, she and her husband adopted a plant-based diet, becoming vegan for health reasons in the beginning, but later discovering more of the benefit veganism has on the planet and animals.
I asked her how she coped on the chocolate front, given her earlier statement of of her daily milk chocolate habit, and the estimated quantities of consumption. It was this foray into veganism that truly introduced Kate to the darker side of chocolate, or what some of us in the industry like to call ‘the good stuff’. Yet Kate couldn’t be without her daily fix of comforting milk chocolate for long, for those ‘every-day occasions‘ as she puts it. After trawling the supermarket aisles and specialist stores despairing at the poor quality and options on offer, Kate took matters into her own hands. Not one for taking half measures, she purchased a little table-top refiner from India and began making (in her words) some truly ‘…awful, terrible chocolate‘. Mainly because of the ingredients; buying cocoa butter from wherever she could, often with no discoverable origin on the packaging, that had probably been sitting around for a fair while before she came across it.
Not easily discouraged by setbacks however, she embarked on a secondary journey that lead to sourcing samples of proper cacao, initially from Uncommon Cacao in the US starting with Maya Mountain, which we both agreed produces a stunningly beautiful chocolate. After nailing the origin for cacao beans and butter, Kate began playing with different ways of making the creamy texture of her Vegan ‘milk’ chocolate. The goal being to try and re-create that nostalgic creamy texture of ‘classic or dairy’ milk chocolate. In the early days she’d play with ‘weird stuff like rice flour‘, with the idea coming from analysing shop-bought mass produced vegan milk chocolate ingredients labels, and trying to replicate it. However, due to the lack of various additives to help maintain emulsification and preserve flavours, the outcomes were still not to standard. Unperturbed, further experiments ensued with different nuts before eventually settling on the coveted cashew nut.
Now set on a recipe it was time to test on some more unforgiving judges – friends and family. Still at Unilever, each weekend after work Kate would make a batch, and every Sunday would gather friends and family to the table, with the high stakes’ challenge of blind tasting her chocolate among supermarket brands, before ranking each one based on what they didn’t like. Smell, taste, texture, everything you would consider when judging. Gold was struck when her subjects were presented with the Maya Mountain beans with cashew ‘milk’. The results for this in some cases were better than the results for the commercially available vegan milk chocolates, was she onto something at last?
Up until this point, all the vegan milk chocolate experiments, although fun, had just been to fill a gap for Kate’s own cravings. But as her kitchen trials continued, supply chain explorations progressed and positive results were forthcoming from her critics, the idea began to dawn that maybe this could be more than just a gap-filler for some downtime. This really had, accidentally or otherwise, become an all-encompassing passion. In her own words, she had now gone ‘…a bit too far down the chocolate rabbit hole, because it’s so easy to do [go down the rabbit hole] once you start…‘. We both agree the addiction to the whole process, not just the overall process of making chocolate, but tempering, watching the whole transformation process, even the smell of it. That was the process she totally fell in love with, and it really was a wild, passionate love.
Things all happened rather fast after that, and it wasn’t long before Kate finally decided to give up her day job to make vegan cashew milk chocolate full time. A combination of Covid and the isolation that brought with it, coupled with the loss of her dear father has resulted in a lot of soul searching and the harsh realisation that life really is too short for ‘what if’s’. For years she’d yearned to start a business, and had recently been wondering what she was to do with the rest of her life, was she going to build something up from scratch, something that was all hers?
The day after she left her role in finance, Kate began working full time on the business, opening the doors to Wonderland nine months later. Those nine months were filled with research, learning from those already successful in the international craft chocolate industry, and filling gaps in her knowledge in the manufacturing space, something she admits she was not overly familiar with at the outset. A daunting task to take on, but made all the easier by the true welcoming warmth of others established in the industry who were often willing to lend advice and tips. Noting that Manoa Chocolate, Dandelion Chocolate and the Chocolate Alchemist in the US particular were particularly helpful right since her early days, offering tips on the best way to lay out a factory, what to look for when purchasing machinery, tips on roasting new origins, how to manage dust during manufacturing – all things a successful chocolate maker must consider.
Once she knew the machines, Kate set to work tracking down manufacturers – Selmi is most probably the best known brand in the industry and they had the machines that were the right size – not too small as Kate was keen for the business to be sustainable financially from the start. She settled on the EX Tempering machine – the largest on offer, holding a whopping 60KG of chocolate and compatible with a lot of other machinery like their enrobing machines. Seeing the equipment up in her factory kitchen brought back memories for me from my days cheffing at William Curley in London – lining up perfectly cut squares of ganache in precise little uniform lines on the belt, as they headed for their coating of chocolate through the enrobed. The benefit of such a machine is that it can eliminate the need for hand tempering, and can improve the consistency and accuracy of coatings. The benefit for Kate was the time saving, as to begin with it was just her and her mum running everything.
But an enrobing machine is pretty much the end of the production line when you are a bean to bar chocolate maker, Kate’s other equipment includes the aptly named Tina Turner (her refiner) and Winona Ryder (yep, you guessed it – her winnower), and CeeLo (Green) their sealing machine. A recent addition to the mechanised family is a second-hand Loynds contrafiner named Edward Scissor Hands as he has blades inside. When left to do his thing he can produce upwards of 50KG of chocolate in half the time Tina can – I get the feeling there might be some sibling rivalry going on here!
The little Behmor roasters however, while they are twins, do not have names, nor does the tempering machine, or the dear little chocolate pot I see on the shelf. A very well-used piece of machinery from Chocolate World that has been with Kate since the start and is still used on the regular to make the caramel chews. Something that amazes people as it’s so tiny, yet so beautifully efficient.
It’s not just most of the machinery that Kate has lovingly named, each product in Wonderland’s range also has its own unique personality, each with its own wonderfully carnival-centric name. But where did the idea for all these whimsy and wonderful names come from? Kate tells me that alongside the intense manufacturing research she was doing before the launch, market research also played a significant role (understandably). If she was going to be successful in a market that was already well established with some well known key players, how was she and her brand going to stand out? She needed to find out what was currently missing from the industry, and where were people’s emotional needs not being met.
The beauty and precision in artwork and finesse of product was already being met with the likes of Foundry Chocolate and Lucid Chocolatier. Adventurous flavour combinations captured in delicious products were already well covered by Baron Hasselhoff’s, Wellington Chocolate Factory were the trail blazers, Ao Cacao is shining the light on Maori heritage and whakaapa, and Coromandel Chocolate had the French flair, and Mind Your Temper are nailing it with edible artwork in bonbon form…just to name a few. But Kate still felt there was a real gap in the truly joyful, unbridled, extroverted community part of the vegan chocolate world. For her, chocolate had always been about joy, pleasure, sharing, and a whole lot of laughter, so she needed a name, styling, and a vibe that could truly convey that.
Many a name was conceived, and then quickly dismissed, including ‘For the Love Of’, which as an acronym becomes ‘Flo’, a name which a good friend of hers aptly pointed out, ‘sounds a bit like a sanitary product‘. Then one day, after a particularly unsuccessful brand naming exercise (it could have been the Flo incident), Kate decided to look into the history of her local area – Miramar – and happened across the Wonderland Adventure Park. Operating from 1907 to 1912 it included a haunted house, a waterslide, rides, and a fireworks show every night. At the time in New Zealand there were a few adventure parks dotted around – Christchurch had one, Auckland, even one across Wellington’s harbour in Days Bay, Eastbourne. But sadly these good things came to an abrupt end, as there was not the population to support them long-term. Interest eventually waned and the parks closed, fading from people’s memories, reduced to nothing but informative plaques at the edge of playgrounds or parks, and black and white photographs in the brochures of community museums. But when Kate discovered Wonderland, it was like a little spark of that park’s magic had been revived and reignited. It was perfect, simply ‘Wonderland’. What’s more, it was right at the end of her street, faded from the mists of time, but its memory was still there. It was the embodiment of adventure, joy, and pleasure, all wrapped up in colourful wonder, if Kate could only bring it back to life through chocolate. It had, in her own words ‘…almost Wonka-like vibes‘.
There was no question about it, Wonderland would be revived, through chocolate! And that is where the names come in; to bring that sense of adventure into Wonderland, each product has its own carefully curated personality, it’s own name: Stan the Strong Man, Cheri the Snake Charmer, Ayla the Acrobat, Ronnie and Rita the Rollercoaster Twins, and recent newcomer to the troupe; Zita the Fire Eater with her Peppermint Chews. While the names aren’t specific names from the original Wonderland of the early 1900s, they are carefully created to be in keeping with the whimsy carnivalesque genre. Much to Kate’s delight, the New Zealand food industry is starting to take notice of this little edible carnival of vegan joy. Wonderland picked up the Supreme Award at the NZ Artisan Awards 2024, something which Kate is understandably immensely proud of, her pinch me moment, enabling her to take a step back very briefly, just to take it all in, to see how far her and her brand have come in the last 2-3 years.
But it’s not just winning awards that gets her going, I can just tell Kate has had so much fun conjuring up this little corner of edible magic with Wonderland, and bringing these characters to life through the packaging designs as well as the flavour combinations. Product development came from a place of true nostalgia, those treats from childhood, but with that vegan spin. The Creme Eggs at Easter, and Conrad the Contortionist with his Pineapple Chews – the vegan (and much tastier) alternative to Pascal’s Pineapple Lumps. Plans to further the nostalgia range are in the works, but shelf-stable vegan nougat is a tricky one to get right Kate explains, so sadly no Wonderland ‘Snickers’ alternatives out there just yet, but watch this space – as Kate says there is a heck of a lot of amazing food technology coming out of Europe right now with pea and potato proteins to replace egg white.
That has been one of the most challenging things for Kate – to make shelf-stable vegan alternatives to confectionary classics. While she is a craft chocolate maker, her business is also firmly situated in the contemporary confectionary market, albeit with a plant-based twist. Her goal is to disrupt that contemporary confectionary industry with her own vegan nostalgic treats and her own vegan craft chocolate. Showing the consumer that they can still have their favourite treats that are still fun and delicious, and be plant-based. For now it’s pretty much just Wonderland and Mind Your Temper who are creating this jolly, colour-infused, playful vegan disruption of the chocolate and confectionary industry, and my gosh are they making a damn good job of it! They also bring that drive for gently educating the consumer too, helping people discover the reality behind commercial chocolate and confectionary – what goes on for the farmers – how little they make from all their hard work and the impact that has on their communities, the variety of different flavours from different origins, even different ‘vintages’. But especially what actually goes into the chocolate, and in particular, commercially made vegan ‘milk’ chocolate, which in fact has very little cacao in it at all, being padded out with many other additives along with an alarming amount of sugar. The concept of each commercially produced chocolate continuing to taste the same is baffling to Kate, as it is to me and many others in the craft chocolate industry. But the benefit Kate has of producing her own bean to bar chocolate and being acutely aware of origins and vintages of the cacao she uses, is that she can blend her couverture for her different confectionary, adding even more magic at every step, with new batch being ever so slightly different to the last, and that of course is really half the fun.
Despite all the fun, joy and magic that Kate is busy creating and releasing into the world with Wonderland, she’s acutely aware of the challenges the market, and wider economy and supply chain are facing at the moment. Despite the challenges, and the setbacks though she continues to keep that faith in her vision and dream alive, and use it to drive her forwards. She remains acutely passionate, but does acknowledge that sometimes there are some particularly challenging days. When those days come she retreats quietly into the chocolate room, to catch a brief moment, watch the machines at work, and breathe in that chocolatey magic, to remind herself of her ‘why’.
Right now, the biggest concerns that keep her up at night, or send her to the chocolate room for a breather, predominantly centre around the cost of cacao butter as well as cashews and coconut. It’s a challenging market, with her own price point already at a premium, so finding that balance and sweet spot (pun intended) of quality vs cost is a challenge, especially if she is to ensure the chocolate reincarnation of Wonderland will not fade into the mists of time. Finding the right balance is crucial. Yet Kate remains forever the optimist, acknowledging the market and economy is really doing it tough right now, but the growing family that is the New Zealand craft chocolate industry is full of inspiration and pioneers to admire and learn from, and the more people that get to experience that Wonderland magic through eating better, honest, vegan craft chocolate, the better.
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