National Baking Week: What will you be creating?

Last week, we had both National Cocktail Week and National Chocolate week. If you didn't get a chance to celebrate, you've still got a chance of winning a box of our Cocktail Collection over on Penny Golightly's rather brilliant money-saving blog.

October continues with the food theme with National Baking Week kicking off today. We're big fans of baking here at Chocoholics. In fact, the idea for our popular Cupcake Collection came after certain members of the team became addicted to baking the delicious mini-cakes.

If you fancy dusting off your oven mitts, we've got just the thing. The Wallace and Gromit flipcover cookbook comes with wipeable pages, a non-permanent pen and nut free sweeties to decorate your creation.

What's your favourite thing to bake?

National Cocktail Week and National Chocolate Week

We love October here at Chocolates for Chocoholics.

As the chilly evenings draw in, we like to indulge in a hot chocolate (using our chocolate stirrer), while we curl up on the sofa in front of some of the best TV shows of the year. X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing and the Inbetweeners all feature on our must-watch list.

But the best thing about October, is that we get an entire week dedicate to chocolate and cocktails! The 11th-17th October is National Chocolate Week and National Cocktail Week. Which we think is ideal for a pampering night in with the girls.

We've got the perfect product for the week: our Cocktail Collection. The collection includes ten delicious luxury chocolates with cocktail flavours including Singapore Sling, Mojito, Peach Bellini, Tequila and Cosmopolitan, and it's only £6!

So, how will you be celebrating Chocolate and Cocktail week?

Tea vs. Coffee

What's your hot drink of choice? Like to start the day off with a relaxing cup of tea? Or perhaps you prefer the caffeine-heavy kick of coffee to wake you up for the day?

Here at Chocoholics, there's a pretty even split of tea and coffee drinkers. Which is why we've got a selection of products suited for both tastes (including our brand new product for tea lovers!)

For the Coffee Lovers

Our Coffee Creams (only £2!) are delicious little discs filled with a coffee fondant cream.

They go nicely with the Cappuccino Sticks (£2.50) for an after dinner treat. They're very addictive though, one Cappuccino usually to several more!

For the Tea Lovers

Tea Lovers can enjoy their favourite cuppa in this Tea For One set.

The £9 set includes a cupcake-decorated teapot (enough for two cups of tea) a cup and saucer with matching cupcake design, and four milk chocolate truffles. Once you've finished with the set, it all stacks up together, making it easy to store.

Luxury Hot Chocolate

Prefer a hot chocolate to tea and coffee? We've got something for you too!

Our Chocolate Stirrer (£1.25)can be dipped into hot milk to give you a creamy and rich hot chocolate.

It tastes pretty amazing stirred into a cup of coffee too.

What could be better on a cold winter evening then curling up with a mug of molten chocolate, eh?

So, are you a tea, coffee or hot chocolate fan? Let us know in the comments!
 

Corporate gifts made easy with personalised chocolate boxes and bars

We've talked about our brand new Winter 2010 range quite a bit recently, but we'd like to tell you a little more about our new Corporate Range.

We noticed a few years ago that a lot of companies wanted to give their employees a personalised Christmas gift. Finding something that suits everyone can be tricky, which is why we launched our Corporate range of products to suit every need. After all, who doesn't love chocolate??

Personalised Gift Boxes 

Our range includes some beautiful personalised gift boxes that can be printed with your brand name or your own personal message. We can also organise personalised ribbons and personalised menu cards.

If your budget is limited, our Personalised Chocolate Bars start at just £1.15+VAT each. For a luxurious purchase, check out our Picnic Hamper for Four.

Fans of our cupcake, dessert cup and continental ranges will be pleased to hear they'll also be available for personalisation.

Corporate Gifts for any occasion

It's all in the Corporate catalogue, which you can view on our website.

Our Corporate range is available all year round, so we'll be able to find something to suit your requirements for corporate chocolate gifts regardless of the time of year.

P.S A recent investigation we conducted suggests we're also one of the most competitively priced providers of personalised gifts in the UK!

Chocoholics Competition: National Cupcake Week

This week is National Cupcake Week, created to celebrate all that is good and tasty about these miniature cakes.

So, what better way to celebrate then to give you a chance to win a box of our delicious cupcake chocolates, exclusive to Chocolates for Chocoholics! We have one box to give away to a lucky winner.

Our cupcakes come in an assortment of flavours, including cherry tart, chocolate brownie, lemon cheesecake and coffee & walnut.

To enter, just head to the comments on this post and finish this sentence

I love cupcakes because....

 For an extra entry, simply tweet the following:

I want to win a box of cupcake chocolates from @Chocoholicsltd for National Cupcake Week!

Please note, only one retweet per person will be counted.

The winner will be announced on Friday 17th September.

Good Luck!

Chocoholics competition: Win a Facebook Selection!

Our Facebook followers might have noticed we've recently been uploading some sneak peeks of our favourite new chocolates from the Winter range. We're really excited about the new ranges (Seasonal and Corporate), which launches next weekend, and we can't wait to hear what you all think about it!

In the meantime, we've got another special treat for you (do we spoil you or what?). Today we're launching our brand new competition, to win a box of the eight most popular chocolates from our Facebook page (check out the gallery here). There are five Facebook Selection boxes up for grabs, and entry is really simply! All you need to do is sign up for our newsletter on the right hand side.

Our newsletter will be sent out every few weeks with updates, offers and news of our latest range. We promise never to spam you or pass your email on to anyone else!

We'll pick five winners at random from the subscribers, and announce them next Monday morning after we launch our complete range.

Which chocolates are your favourites?

The Chocoholics guide to self-employment: How does childcare work if you're self-employed?

In the fourth of our series of guidelines for self-employment, we look at how you can juggle a new job with childcare.

A lot of our fabulous distributors across the UK are mothers, as the role fits in beautifully with looking after the kids. Our main work seasons are for the 10-11 weeks running up to Christmas and the 7 weeks running up to Easter, which means you get the whole summer off to spend with the children!

During the busy seasons, you'll need to get a bit of childcare in when you're out at the parties. Here are a few options you might want to consider.

• Asking a family member to help out: If you're lucky enough to have a partner who can look after the children whilst you're out, great! If not, consider whether there are any grandparents, siblings or other family members who might be able to look after for you. It's usually free too!

• Childminder: A flexible childminder can look after your kids for a couple of hours each night, particularly great if they look after children of the same age.

• Friends: Got a friend who works part-time hours? You could arrange a schedule where you take it in turns to look after each other's kids, which helps you both out!

You'll still be able to collect certain benefits, like:

• Child Benefit: £20.30 for your oldest child (under 16) and £13.40 for each child after

• Tax Credits: Check out this useful guide on tax credits for the self-employed.

Got the childcare sorted and want to apply to become a Chocoholics distributor? Then either leave us a message in the comments or give us a call on 0118 9321043.

Next post: The Chocoholics guide to self-employment: How do you promote yourself?

The Chocoholics guide to self-employment: How much time will you need?

In the third of our series of guidelines for self-employment, we look at the amount of time you'll need to dedicate to being your own boss.

Many people believe that working for themselves will give them a lot more time then working for others. The reality is, whilst you'll be able to fit it in around any childcare arrangements or commitments you have, you'll probably find yourself working a few weekends and evenings. Effectively, you're doing all the finance, admin, marketing, customer services and sales for your business.

Luckily, the support team at Chocoholics are on hand to help with a lot of these areas, and we've already covered the financial requirements which should only take a couple of hours a month. But what other things do you need to consider when it comes to how your time is spent as a Chocoholics distributor.

• Time spent promoting your business: Whether you're dropping catalogues off to neighbourhoods and schools or contact local businesses, you'll need to put aside several hours a week to promote yourself and bring in new business. Double this for your first season. We'll outlline some great promotional suggestions in a future post in the series.

• Social media: If you're a Twitter or Facebook user, half an hour each day on your accounts promoting your business can really improve your chances of getting new customers

• Parties: We suggest you do three parties a week, which usual takes several hours. These take place during the evening, so you'll have to cater for loading up your car with the display range, getting to the venue, setting everything up, holding the party, packing it all down again and going home!

• Orders: You'll need to put your order in every week, which can take a couple of hours or summing everything up and then sending it to Chocoholics HQ. We recommend using a spreadsheet to keep track of everything.

• When the orders arrives, you'll need to package up each individual order and double check it's all there. It's fantastic if you can rope a friend or family member into double-checking it all  for you too. This can take up to five hours a week, depending on the size of your order. Then you have to....

• Deliver the chocolates: Most customers prefer if you can drop the chocolates off to them, so you'll need drop each order off. Thankfully most orders can be dropped off with each party hostess, who will distribute it to her guests.

So, overall it's a busy job! It's worth bearing in mind that the Chocoholics role is seasonal, so it'll be busy during the Easter and Christmas season, but you can enjoy some time with your family and friends during the summer.

If you'd like the sound of the job, get in contact! Either leave us a message in the comments or give us a call on 0118 9321043.

Next post: The Chocoholics guide to self-employment: How does childcare work if you're self-employed?

The Chocoholics guide to self-employment: The legal bits

In the second of our series of guidelines for self-employment, we look at all the legal requirements you need to fulfil to get you on the road to being your own boss!

One of the most intimidating things about becoming self-employed can be all the legal jargon, tax and NI requirements. But it's really quite simple to set yourself up, particularly if you know a fantastic accountant who can talk you through the whole process. It's also worth adding the HM Revenue & Customs website to your bookmarks as they have some fantastic straightforward advice.

Here are the basic things you'll need to do:

• 
  
  Register as self-employed with the HM Revenue & Customs. You can do this online, over the telephone, or print off an application to post to them. Prepare for your annual tax returns. Instead of having your tax and NI deducted from your monthly salary, you'll have to pay it all in one go at the end of each tax year (April). These need to be sent back by 31 October for paper ones or 31 January for online ones. You'll be sent the following forms:
• • If you're self-employed you'll need to complete either page SA103S (if your turnover was below £68,000) or SA103F (if your turnover was £68,000 or more).
  • If you're self-employed in a business partnership you'll need to complete either page SA104S (for partnerships that only have trading income - and taxed bank and building society interest or alternative finance receipts); or page SA104F (for all other types of partnership income). These forms detail your share of the partnership's profit or loss.
  • You may need page SA102 if you also work as an employee.
• Keep track of all your expenses, and store all receipts. The expenses you have for business can be taken off your tax return later. Also print out your bank statements every month. If you tend to use your bank card a lot for non-business expenses (e.g trips to fast food joints or high street shops) it might be worth looking into opening an alternative account for your business transactions.
• Your accountant or HM Revenues should be able to talk you through setting up your NI payments, either by monthly Direct Debit or a quarterly bill.
• It's best to put away around 25-30% of your income to cover your tax return and NI.
  

So that's the scary tax and NI stuff dealt with! I'd recommend putting a couple of hours aside every month to update your records, rather than panicking at the end of the year. It's really not as scary as it looks though, and the people at HMRC are really helpful if you give them a ring.

Next post: The Chocoholics guide to self-employment: How much time will you need?

The Chocoholics guide to self-employment

Here at Chocolates for Chocoholics we're always on the lookout for talented and self-motivated people from all over the UK to become distributors. Being a self-employed distributor give you the opportunity to work for yourself, fit your work in around your childcare and earn some great money whilst being surrounded by chocolate!

Whilst there are undeniably many advantages of being self-employed, there are a few things you should think about too:

• What legal requirements do you need to complete?
• How much time can you contribute to a role?
• If you have kids, do you have someone to cover the childcare when you are working?
• Are you happy constantly seeking out new customers and opportunities?
• Do you prefer working in a team or on your own?
• How do you feel about dealing with tax, NI and savings?

If you want to work for Chocoholics, you might want to think of the following points:

• Do you have enough storage room for all the delicious chocolate orders?
• Do you live on a ground floor flat/house? Running up and down the stairs with boxes at 10pm after a party can be tricky!
• Do you have a car for getting to and from parties?
• Do you have a computer with internet access and landline?

Yes to all the above? Excellent! In the next few weeks we'll be giving you the Chocoholics guide to setting up as self-employed. If you're got any specific questions or want to know anything more, drop us an email!

Using chocolate in cooking.

Using chocolate in cooking.
We have just got back from a cruise in the Mediterranean and one of the stops our ship made was Sorrento in Italy. This is a very pretty town and is very popular with passing cruise ships. On occasions you can find the town overrun with tourists but its sheer popularity means that they have developed a very good shopping area.
We walked down the Via S.Cesareo and we were faced with an amazing collection of specialist shops selling a huge variety of different items. The ones we found most exciting were the delicatessen with their delicious range of Italian foodstuffs.
As lovers of everything connected with the cocoa bean we were instantly attracted to the packs of Chocolate Pasta on offer. For many people the combination of the two is a little strange but for me I can’t wait to pop the pasta into a pan of boiling water and cook it for myself.
There are an increasing number of cookery programnmes on the tv with both famous and amateur chefs all trying to come up with novel ways to cook with chocolate. Although most of them are cakes or desserts you can also use powdered chocolate  in sauces, marinades or as coatings.

Man surprises his wife with a chocolate covered iPad!

At Chocolates for Chocoholics, we’re obviously big fans of chocolate. But if there’s one thing we’re yearning for even more than chocolate, it’s the new iPad. So when we heard that a generous husband had managed to wrap an iPad up in chocolate and present it to his wife for her birthday, we had to find out more.
Stefan Magdalinski knew his wife Kay Chung was desperate for Apple’s latest offering, but didn’t want to make it obvious. So he turned to a local chocolate shop to freeze his perfect purchase in chocolate carbonite.
On the right is the final result, wrapped in purple ribbon.
Kay opened up the present and was initially bemused. But catching site of the ribbon inside the chocolate, she slowly unpeeled the chocolate casing to reveal her real present, like a delicious game of pass the parcel.
You can see Kay’s reaction here, photo by photo.
What do you think of Kay’s birthday surprise?

Give us your website suggestions for the chance to win some chocolate!

The Chocolates for Chocoholics website was first designed in 2007 and is badly in need of an update!
We know that there are plenty of experts we can talk to achieve this but we would also like to get the thoughts of those customers who have visited or placed orders on our site.
We are very keen to get your opinions and as an incentive for people to respond we are offering the senders of the three top suggestions a luxury box of chocolates! In addition, everyone else who responds will receive a special time limited discount to use on our website.
To give you an idea of the kind of questions we would like answers to we have highlighted a few of the possible improvements:
1) Do you find our Home Page easy to navigate and does it contain all the information you need?
2) Is it easy for you to find the products you want, and does our search facility work OK ?
3) Does our range include the kind of products you want . If not what would you like to see?
4) Are we competitively priced?
5) Our website tries to include details on the following: our luxury chocolate range, seasonal products, corporate chocolates, personalised products, Chocoholics Distributors, Chocolate Parties and our Celebrations collection etc. Do you find it easy to navigate to these areas and do you find the  information you need?
6) Are you happy with the way our online shop works, is it easy to place orders.
7) We currently accept all major credit/debit cards and Amex. We could extend that to include Paypal, would this be of interest to you?
8 ) Do you like the idea of Flash presentations or videos.
9) Some websites build their delivery charges into the overall cost of ALL their products so you pay extra for everything. We prefer to keep our individual costs as low as possible but then add a single postage charge on. We currently send virtually all our deliveries out by courier and we simply pass on their charge of £5.95. We are looking at introducing a secondary and lower charge for items that can be sent by Royal Mail. Do you prefer to pay a single delivery charge irrespective of the order size  or would you rather that we build the cost into the items?
So, what do you want to see on the site? Any changes? Let us know in the comment below!