Apr 21, 2013

Business and Family Mix at Chocolatebox Home Near PeeblesBy Fiona ReidScotsman.com

Peebles, Scotland – RUTH and David Hinks will always be grateful to his former childhood home near Peebles for giving them the perfect space to launch their business

SOME OF the best ideas or ventures in life come about in apparently happenchance ways. For Ruth Hinks, co-founder – with her husband David – of Cocoa Black, her passion for chocolate dates back to her childhood in South Africa. “I wanted a double tape deck radio,” she recalls, “and my Dad wouldn’t just buy me one; he said, ‘You need to make your own money’. I was out on my bicycle one day and saw an Easter egg mould for sale, and that was it. Twenty six years later, I’m still making chocolate.”

The entrepreneurial zeal that saw Ruth making and selling chocolate Easter eggs as a 13-year-old was back in full force when Ruth and David set up Cocoa Black in 2008, initially working from the kitchen of their home just outside Peebles in the Scottish Borders. If you’re imagining the couple cramped in a tiny kitchen think again: the dining-kitchen at Woodbine Cottage is a fantastic space. It is more than 25ft long and just under 15ft wide for a start, so there’s enough room here for a serious cook to flex their culinary muscles, and the space was designed by Ruth to be highly practical to work in, explaining the two fridges and Rangemaster cooker.

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