By Ben Popple, founder of Mr Popple’s Chocolate · Updated July 2026 · 8 min read

🍫 The 60-second answer

If you are hunting for a Raw Chocolate Company alternative after its closure, Mr Popple’s Chocolate is the UK maker to try next. Still raw, still organic, still handmade, still vegan. The same goes if you are missing Conscious Chocolate. Here is what happened, and what to reach for now.

Both brands have gone, and if you landed here you are probably feeling that particular little pang of losing a favourite chocolate. I understand it more than most, so let me say the useful thing first: Mr Popple’s Chocolate is a genuine Raw Chocolate Company alternative, made the same slow, low-temperature way, from organic Peruvian cacao, by hand. If Conscious Chocolate was your one, the same is true for you.

I am not going to pretend that makes the loss sting less. These were good brands run by good people. What I can do is explain, honestly, what happened, why our bars will feel familiar, and which one to try depending on what you used to love.

Not in the mood for the full story? Start here.

Browse our organic Peruvian raw chocolate bars

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What happened to The Raw Chocolate Company and Conscious Chocolate?

Both closed in the spring of 2025. They had come under shared ownership, and they announced it together, in one statement posted to both their Instagram accounts. No drama, no scandal, just an honest note from makers who could no longer make the sums work.

That line about cacao prices is not an excuse, it is the whole story. The cost of raw cacao beans went through the roof. According to a University of Oxford expert comment, cocoa that had sat fairly stable at around £2,000 to £3,000 a tonne quadrupled to over £8,000 in a matter of months. For a big manufacturer, you swallow that or you shrink the bar. For a small, family-owned maker committed to real, sustainably sourced cacao and a fair price, there is nowhere to hide.

You could see how the giants coped. As Reuters reported, the industry response was to shrink bar sizes, pad them out with more wafers, fruit and nuts, and lean on cheaper chocolate alternatives. The brands that would not do that, the ones that insisted on keeping the cacao real and the recipe honest, took the full weight of it instead. That is the quiet, unfair truth behind both closures.

Is Mr Popple’s a good Raw Chocolate Company alternative?

Yes, because we make chocolate the same way they did, and for the same reasons. We are a small, family-owned UK maker that keeps its cacao raw, ferments and stone-grinds the beans, and never lets the temperature climb high enough to roast the life out of it. If you chose those brands for their values, you were choosing ours too.

The shared ground is real, not marketing. Like them, we are raw and unroasted, certified organic, vegan and palm-oil-free. Our organic cacao is single origin, grown in Peru, a fine-flavour Criollo that is sustainably sourced through a farmers’ cooperative and carries a high cocoa content with the deep flavour that comes with it. The organic ingredients used in each bar of chocolate are few and honest, and every one is handcrafted in small batches using slow, traditional production methods, the way we have done it since 2007.

I should tell you why this one is personal. My very first bag of raw cacao nibs came from Emma Jackman of Conscious Chocolate, at Shambala festival back in 2007, the same summer Mr Popple’s began. I shared them with a few new friends that night and we had one of those daft, brilliant evenings you never quite forget. Two years later, at my first proper trade show, a vegan fair in Brighton in 2009, Linus Gorpe of The Raw Chocolate Company went out of his way to encourage a nervous newcomer with a folding table and no idea what he was doing. These were not rivals to me. They were part of the reason raw chocolate existed in this country at all.

Our natural sweeteners, never refined sugar

Here is one genuine difference, and it is an upgrade. Where a lot of chocolate leans on refined cane sugar, we use natural sweeteners instead. Our organic dark chocolate is sweetened with yacon syrup, which has a glycaemic index of just 1, and our mylks with coconut sugar. It means the sweetness is gentle and whole-food, without the spike and slump of the usual stuff. And because we are free from all top 14 allergens and made in a nut-free facility, whatever your dietary requirements, you can relax and just enjoy the chocolate.

If you loved The Raw Chocolate Company’s m*lk and dark chocolate bars

Match by flavour and you will not go far wrong. Here is an honest steer from their best-loved dark chocolate bars and mylks to the nearest Mr Popple’s cousin.

If you loved…	Try this instead
Vanoffee (creamy, toffee-toned)	Creamy Mylk
Plain dark 72%	Signature Seventy 70%
Plain dark 100%	Pure Peruvian 100%
Mint bars	Minty Mylk
Orange bars	Euphoric Orange (Dark) or Creamy Orange (Sweet & Creamy)

Vanoffee was their signature, a creamy vanilla-toffee thing chocolate lovers adored. I will not claim to make it, because it was theirs and it should stay theirs. What I can offer is our Creamy Mylk, our creamiest, dairy-free milk chocolate, sweet and smooth and mellow. If you would rather go dark, our Signature Seventy has the yacon and cacao perfectly balanced, rich without being bitter. Not the same bars. But if it was that easy sweetness you loved, this is where I would send you first.

A Conscious Chocolate alternative, made with raw cacao

Conscious Chocolate had a texture all its own, soft and almost fudgy, because it was made with coconut butter alongside cacao butter. That is genuinely hard to replicate, and I would rather be straight than oversell: our bars have the firmer, cleaner snap of proper raw cacao chocolate, not that melt-in-the-fingers softness. If the texture was the thing you loved most, ours will feel different on the palate.

On flavour, though, we have you covered.

If you loved…	Try this instead
Dark 75%	Signature Seventy 70%
Essential-oil mint or orange bars	Minty Mylk or Euphoric Orange

Now, that rose-infused Love Potion No.9. Here is a happy coincidence: we made a rose-infused bar of our own once, though we discontinued it back in 2019. If enough of you would love to see it return, do let us know in the comments, because we genuinely listen and it would be lovely to have a reason to bring it back.

Their maca, spirulina and chia superfood bars are the one thing I cannot point you toward, because we do not make superfood bars. We put our faith in the raw cacao itself, quietly rich in antioxidants, flavanols and other flavonoids, rather than in added extras. And The Raw Chocolate Company’s coated fruit-and-nut buttons we simply cannot do, because we keep a strictly nut-free facility.

Creamy, plant-based mylk chocolate without the dairy

If what you loved was the softer, milkier end of the range, our mylks are where to look. Rather than dairy, we build their smooth, creamy chocolate character on rice and oat milks, with cocoa butter for that melt. Our Creamy Mylk is the obvious starting point, a proper oat milk chocolate bar in spirit, gentle and comforting. It is one of those vegan bars that quietly wins over people who swore they could always tell the difference, with no added sugar of the refined kind, just naturally less sugar impact.

From a smooth 70% to our extra dark chocolate

For chocolate cravings that lean grown-up and intense, our darker bars go the other way. There is a smooth dark chocolate at 70% in the Signature Seventy, a particularly dark, extra dark cacao chocolate at 88% in the Atey Ate, and the uncompromising Pure Peruvian at 100%. Whichever end you prefer, it is high-quality chocolate made the slow way, and there is a warming Sippable Seventy hot chocolate in the range too, for the cold evenings.

One of the few genuinely raw, vegan chocolate brands

This is for anyone who chose those brands on purpose. If you cared that your chocolate was genuinely raw, organic, vegan and ethically made, you will feel at home here. If you have an allergy, our top-14-allergen-free, nut-free promise goes further than most of the plant-based chocolate bars on the market, which is a big part of why we are one of the few vegan chocolate brands allergy sufferers can trust completely.

It is honestly not for you if what you loved was a specific nut inclusion, a superfood-stuffed treat, or that uniquely soft coconut-butter texture. We do not make those, and I would rather point you elsewhere than dress up something that will only disappoint.

Frequently asked questions

What happened to The Raw Chocolate Company?
The Raw Chocolate Company closed in spring 2025. In a joint statement with Conscious Chocolate, posted to both brands’ Instagram accounts, they explained that the significant rise in cocoa prices had made it increasingly difficult to keep offering high-quality, ethically sourced chocolate at fair prices. No other reason was given.

What happened to Conscious Chocolate?
Conscious Chocolate closed at the same time as The Raw Chocolate Company, in spring 2025, under shared ownership. The two brands announced their closure together in a single statement, citing the sharp rise in cacao prices as the reason they could no longer continue operating as they always had.

Is Mr Popple’s chocolate raw?
Yes. At Mr Popple’s Chocolate we keep our cacao genuinely raw and unroasted, stone-ground and conched at a low temperature that stays below 42°C. Roasting reaches 120°C or more and destroys delicate compounds, so keeping things cool preserves more of the flavanols and antioxidants naturally found in raw cacao.

Is Mr Popple’s chocolate allergen-free?
Every Mr Popple’s Chocolate bar is free from all top 14 allergens and made in a nut-free facility under strict hygiene controls. That is a broader promise than dairy, gluten and soya alone, which makes our bars a reassuring choice for allergy sufferers who loved the closed brands.

Does Mr Popple’s chocolate contain added sugar?
No refined sugar, and no artificial sweeteners either. Our dark bars are sweetened with yacon syrup, which has a glycaemic index of just 1, and our mylks with coconut sugar. So while every vegan chocolate bar naturally contains some sweetness, it comes from whole-food sources with less sugar impact than regular chocolate, and never a synthetic added sugar.

How is Mr Popple’s similar to those two brands?
Like The Raw Chocolate Company and Conscious Chocolate, Mr Popple’s Chocolate is raw, unroasted, certified organic, vegan, palm-oil-free and uses natural sweeteners rather than refined sugar. We are a small UK maker using single origin cacao from Peru, working by hand in small batches with traditional production methods, so the ethos will feel very familiar.

How is Mr Popple’s different from them?
The main differences are genuine upgrades. Mr Popple’s Chocolate is free from all top 14 allergens and nut-free, uses low-GI yacon syrup and coconut sugar, and comes in fully plastic-free, compostable packaging. We have also been handmaking delicious chocolate this way since 2007.

How does Mr Popple’s compare to regular chocolate?
Unlike regular chocolate, which is usually roasted at high temperatures and made with refined sugar and dairy, our bars are raw, plant-based and naturally sweetened. Tasting chocolate this pure is a different experience, so we would gently suggest letting a square melt slowly on the palate rather than rushing it.

Does Mr Popple’s make a hot chocolate?
We do, in a manner of speaking. Our Sippable Seventy cacao drink chunks melt into a rich, warming hot chocolate, made from the same raw Peruvian cacao as our bars. It is a lovely way to enjoy good chocolate on a cold evening, with none of the refined sugar of a shop-bought sachet.

Where can I buy Mr Popple’s chocolate?
You can buy directly from us online, with free UK delivery on orders over £25 and letterbox-friendly boxes. Browse the full range of organic Peruvian raw chocolate bars to find your new favourite.

Ready to find your new favourite?

We know we are not them, and we would never try to be. But if you loved raw, organic, handmade chocolate with nothing to hide, we think you will feel right at home. Have a browse, pick the one that sounds like your old favourite, and taste it for yourself.

Shop our organic Peruvian raw chocolate bars

Free UK delivery over £25 · Plastic-free packaging · Top 14 allergen free · BDA organic certified

Last updated: July 2026