Booja Booja

The Booja-Booja Company, winner of 28 awards, is well known for its sumptuous organic chocolate truffles while its brand new Stuff in a Tub - a delicious alternative to dairy ice cream - has been voted the Best New Organic Food Product 2007.

Based in Norfolk, we are a small, independently owned business that aspires to make a real and positive difference to the world. Our driving force is not profit for profit.s sake but a desire to nurture intimacy, balance, love, ecstasy and humour in the world. Specifically we aim to serve a happy, balanced, healthy relationship with pleasure by offering people extraordinarily delicious products that are maximally benign in all respects at reasonable prices. Over the past eight years the extraordinarily delicious products have all been chocolate truffles but 2007 is a momentous year which sees us moving into the frozen food sector with our revolutionary Stuff in a Tub. We are also very excited to be introducing a new range of raw products imported directly from our friends, a community of organic cocoa growers, in Ecuador. In keeping with our company vision all the new products are - like the chocolates - 100% organic, completely vegan and free from dairy, wheat and gluten. But our new ranges take the concept of maximally benign treats a step further; the cacao beans and nibs are genuinely raw so as to maintain their maximum nutritional value and Stuff in a Tub contains only a handful of pure, natural ingredients; no cholesterol, no refined sugars and no stabilisers or emulsifiers.

Behind these enticing products is a small, dedicated team headed by our founder Colin Mace. Everything happens on one site - all production, development, warehousing, sales, customer services and accounts - so there is a strong sense of community. Managerial hierarchy is kept to a minimum and the emphasis is on developing a culture where everyone feels safe to flourish and grow. Honesty, tolerance, cooperation and effective communication are central to this approach and while each department focuses on its own day to day priorities the whole company gets together at the end of every week to discuss key areas, review plans, share ideas and sometimes (you guessed it) sample new products or improved recipes. All of the production team have been with the company for a number of years, moving from part-time to full-time positions, learning new skills and taking on increased responsibilities as the business has grown. Two years ago a business development team was formed to focus on nurturing relationships with external partners including press, consumers, wholesalers and of course stockists. We are firm in our support of independent shops and have made a public commitment that our products will never be sold in supermarkets. We like the role independent shops play in the community - providing beautiful, benign, human-scale places where people can learn about their food and enjoy enthusiastic, knowledgeable and caring customer service.

As well as keeping Booja-Booja products out of the supermarkets we support our stockists by offering free tasting samples and display materials. We also invite interaction and feedback via our regular newsletter the BoojaBubble and maintain a stockist database so we can help interested consumers find their nearest supplier (shops, please keep in touch and make sure we've got your details.)

Remaining true to our principles brings plenty of challenges and can mean making some difficult decisions but we have never been afraid to buck the trend. For instance in a sector where packaging is traditionally designed with a 'bigger is better' mindset our watchwords are minimal, renewable and beautiful. Inevitably there are compromises along the way but each new development takes us a step closer to achieving our goals.

Our Luxury Gift Boxes and exquisite Easter Eggs are hand made by a community of artists in Kashmir. As well as providing us with a unique gift range (and our customers with some beautiful, fairly traded keepsakes) this relationship provides year-round work and a guaranteed income for families in one of the world's poorest countries.

What really keeps our passion alive is the positive response we get from the people who enjoy our products. Emails of delight from happy customers and the smiles on the faces of consumers as they experience the joy that is a Booja-Booja truffle or a mouthful of Stuff in a Tub are enough to make it all worthwhile, after all 'Everyone needs a little Booja-Booja now and then'.