From Issue Seven of Hidden Scotland Magazine

Bare Bones Chocolate - Cacao goodness

Lara and Cam’s bean-to-bar chocolate, made in Glasgow.

Printed in Issue Seven of Hidden Scotland Magazine, Autumn and Winter 2023–24.

The Glasgow-based bean-to-bar chocolate producer Bare Bones Chocolate celebrates the purity of cacao beans in single-origin chocolate. As the awards fly in, founders Lara and Cam remain committed to the principles of flavour and fairness.

Bare Bones Chocolate started with a phone call from a frazzled Lara Messer to her then boyfriend Cameron Dixon. The photographer was on the train home to Glasgow after a demanding fashion shoot when she found a craft chocolate bar in her bag. “I started eating it and daydreamed about how incredible it would be to make chocolate for a living,” she remembers. She immediately Googled how chocolate is made and phoned Cameron. “I couldn’t wait until I got home. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited about something!”

“Cam”, now Lara’s husband (they recently got married in the Bare Bones Chocolate workshop), was at the time a mechanical engineer in Glasgow, and was just as excited. The pair set to work, initially from home. It was 2017 and the craft chocolate market was tiny – “there was next to no information available about how to make it, so Cam’s engineering background was helpful,” says Lara. They spent a year sourcing and testing single-origin cacao beans and launched with the 70% Madagascar and 60% Honduras Milk in 2018. The milk chocolate won two stars at the Great Taste Awards within months of its launch. Now, almost every Bare Bones Chocolate product holds an award.

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