Wonka-style Kik & The Chocolate Factory opening at SA shopping centre
EVERYONE’S chocolate fantasies can now be realised in 10 minutes flat at a new pop-up store that’s opening within a suburban Adelaide shopping centre later this month.
EVERYONE’S chocolate fantasies can now be realised in 10 minutes flat at a new pop-up store that’s opening within a suburban Adelaide shopping centre later this month.
Customers can make their own healthy, weird, wacky and Wonka-style chocolates at Kik & The Chocolate Factory, which will set up home on the ground floor at the Westfield Tea Tree Plaza centre from October 20.
For Louise Nobes, founder of Kik Enterprise, the store represents 18 months of working on the concept with her team, training them and working with the New Venture Institute at Flinders University to customise machinery that can create bespoke chocolates within minutes.
Ms Nobes set up Kik Enterprise two years ago to end youth unemployment through developing and growing enterprises. So far she has set up the Kik concept coffee stores, a Kik Cleaning business and now the chocolate factory.
“For me it delivered on so many levels — the opportunity to build a new enterprise for our existing staff, build a new training grounds to create jobs and give people a chance to bring to life the flavours they have only imagined about,” Ms Nobes told The Advertiser.
The DIY pop-up store will stay for six months, operating seven days with chocolate making starting from $5.
Creative freedom for customers extends to personalising their chocolate blocks including the colour, flavours, fillings and custom messages using white, milk, dark and vegan chocolate options.
“Think maple syrup and bacon chocolate. It’s amazing because it will not taste anything like you think it will.
“Adelaide doesn’t have anything like it and we hope it’s a model that we can replicate on scale,” she said.
For Kik’s chief chocolatier Michael Evans, who comes from a disadvantaged background, the new enterprise has been another growth opportunity.
“I consider my day job a normal part of my life now and seeing something I have been involved in from the scratch is hard to comprehend at times.
“Two years ago I couldn’t even imagine having a job or wanting to achieve anything. My life has been through lots of dark times, where I felt it would never end and this made me feel hopeless.
“I now feel like a different person — it’s hard to believe this is all behind me now,” he said.