By Eleanor Fleming PA Real Life Phoebe Jobling
A mum who built a ‘dreamy’ chocolate factory just steps from her home has likened herself to today’s “female Willy Wonka”. Kasha Connolly, 43, is the creative mind behind Hazel Mountain Chocolate, built between her house in Galway Bay and the Burren Mountains in Ireland – where the scent of roasting cocoa beans wafts to her doorstep. Kasha has always loved baking, learning her skills from her mother and grandfather whilst growing up in Poland. She moved to Ireland in 2007 to pursue a teaching career, and ended up meeting her now-husband John, 47, in 2009 on what was supposed to be a ‘temporary visit’. The couple decided to build a chocolate factory next to their home, Ireland’s only bean-to-bar chocolate factory and visitor centre, which opened in 2014. Sign up to our Manchester property newsletter here Often nicknamed ‘The Chocolate Lady’, Kasha indulges in chocolate daily, yet keeps none at home due to the factory’s closeness. Kasha never envisaged her business soaring to such heights, with this year’s turnover projected to hit between 2.7 to three million euros, which she calls “surreal”. Speaking to PA Real Life, Kasha said: “You could say that (I’m the female Willy Wonka). “I need to emphasise how different the chocolate that we work with is, but when you come along, everything is behind the glass – you see the flowing chocolate and the cocoa beans. “People always ask, ‘Why are you here?’ But I feel that’s the magic of the place, that we’re in the middle of nowhere. “It’s a little bit dreamy, it’s magical.” Kasha was brought up by her single mother in Poland and said they were “very poor”, therefore food was “scarce”. She reminisced about never having chocolate at home or indulging in store-bought sweet treats, but instead, they made everything from scratch – a practice that ignited her passion for baking from an early age. “We never bought sweets or cookies, we always made everything ourselves,” she said. “My grandfather had a bakery in Poland, and I just don’t remember ever buying anything from the shop.” After earning her master’s degree in Poland, Kasha moved to Ireland in 2007 to “explore the culture, the language and the people”, thinking it would be a short-term stay. Yet, fate had other plans when she met her future husband, John, while on a guided hike on New Year’s Eve in 2009, leading her to settle in Ireland permanently. “One tour operator was offering this hike in the Burren… and John was the guide, so that’s how I met my husband,” she recounted. “I came to Ireland just to experience the culture, the language, and I thought I’d be on my way again, but I never left.” Together with John, who had ambitions to convert his grandparents’ old cottage into a walking centre for hikers, they decided to open the cottage as a café to welcome the public. Drawing upon the culinary heritage passed down from her mother and grandfather, Kasha has taken the reins of the cafe to sell handcrafted chocolates in quaint packages. She shared: “What’s mad is that I came here as a teacher and accidentally went back to my roots of cooking and baking.” Following careful planning, Kasha and her husband dipped into “a small amount of savings” to build a medium-sized chocolate factory a mere 30 metres from their cottage, which they also refurbished into an idyllic family home featured on Ireland’s ‘Home Of The Year’ TV programme. Since its debut, Kasha has collaborated with celebrity chefs such as John Torode, Nigella Lawson, and Babatunde Abifarin, guiding the enterprise to impressive growth and nurturing a dedicated staff of 22. “When I go outside, I can smell the chocolate when they’re roasting the cocoa beans – it’s pretty cool,” she said. “I’m so connected to the chocolate factory; I can walk to have my morning coffee there.” “I think we’re so proud to be processing cocoa beans on site because we really create such a pure chocolate.” Working directly with cocoa plantation owners in countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, and Guatemala, the cocoa beans are fermented and then shipped to the factory for roasting over several weeks. The roasted cocoa beans’ contents are milled with just sugar and Irish milk to create what’s touted as the “purest” chocolate, sold in forms such as bars and truffles. Kasha highlighted that their dark chocolate is uniquely free from bitterness, and the factory boasts a “truffle room” soon to be transformed into an interactive experience. “Only about 2% of all the chocolatiers and chocolate factories in the world do that process, making chocolate from scratch,” Kasha noted. “It’s illuminating for people who say, ‘Wow, this is how chocolate is meant to taste’.” Kasha takes pride in educating visitors; the factory draws around 200,000 guests annually from distant lands including Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Since the factory’s inception, she has authored three cookbooks and launched a travel and food series on YouTube titled Food For Stories. Recently, Kasha was celebrated with the Food Hero Award at the Irish Restaurant Awards, which she mentioned is often dubbed the “Food Oscars”. Kasha remarked: “This was a great moment of recognition, especially coming from a childhood when food was scarce to now having built Ireland’s only bean-to-bar chocolate factory and visitor centre, it feels almost like a legacy.” On giving advice to budding entrepreneurs, Kasha encouraged: “do what excites them” and to lean into the fear, adding: “Everything amazing is outside of your comfort zone. “It feels very surreal because none of it was planned,” she reflected. “We literally built the whole business from the ground up. There were no wealthy parents behind us, there was nothing – just a small amount of savings and trying to make it work as a couple. “You really don’t have to see the top of the mountain from the bottom, you just need to see the next step and trust that things will fall into place.” Join the Manchester Evening News WhatsApp group HERE