Phil Hemmings: Ross Chocolates Makes a Premium Keto Friendly – Sugar Free Chocolate for the Healthy Living Consumer

Ross Chocolates makes a Premium Keto Friendly – Sugar Free Chocolate for the Healthy Living Consumer, Diabetics, Keto Dieters, and those who just want to reduce the amount of sugar in their diet. In addition to using Sustainable Chocolate and having a clean label & ingredients (GMO/Gluten Free/High Fiber), we use a portion of sales to support Diabetic Research.

Tell us about yourself?

After 15 years of counselling work with Young Offenders & Mental Health clients, I started a part time company providing nutritious fruit shakes (and later Kettle Korn) to local festivals in the Vancouver area. The success of that gave me the confidence to mortgage my house and start a production plant.

I was the first company to put packaged Kettle Korn in the grocery stores and was Canada wide. After 10 years, I eventually closed the company as I was unable to compete with the larger companies who entered the category.

I was hired at Ross Chocolates to over see sales in Canada and to launch our Chocolate into the US market

If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?

I would tell myself to balance my visionary approach to growing my company with a more numbers focused awareness. Having a better understanding of where your money is going helps with cash flow and deciding what marketing ventures are worth doing.

What problem does your business solve?

Provides Diabetic with an award winning Chocolate without spiking their blood sugar levels. Gives Keto Dieters the ability to eat chocolate without packaging on excessive carbs

What is the inspiration behind your business?

The company was founded by Bob Ross who was Chocolate lover diagnosed with Diabetes. He began producing a Chocolate that diabetics can enjoy without negatively effecting them

What is your magic sauce?

Our Stevia line use a Natural Stevia/Erythritol blend to sweeten our Chocolate. This Sweetener is more consumer friendly than Maltitol (most popular alternative sweetener which can cause digestive issues with people with sensitive systems.

Also, no other Chocolate company uses a portion of sales to hep support Diabetic Research.

What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?

We have launched 3 new lines in the past 4 months and will continue to be innovative to ensure we are giving Keto Dieters and Diabetics quality products to enjoy. Our 5 year plan is to increase sales in the US to 10’000’000.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?

The pandemic really slowed our launch in the US. Our Chocolate flavor is our biggest advantage and marketing tool.

Being unable to get face to face with buyers and sales reps in the US was a painful. However, we switched gears and poured our time, money, and resources into growing our online business which is well positioned today.

We also used our time to be creative with new products. Now that we are able to begin travelling and have a presence at US Trade Shows, we feel we’ll begin an accelerated growth this year.

How do people get involved/buy into your vision?

We want to work with like minded companies and individuals. I love this company because it legitimately cares about the end consumer. It would make my negotiations go a lot easier if I didn’t need to account for the additional funds to help support Diabetic research, but it is the foundation of the company.

Natural food stores and pharmacies have always been an important partner to us, but it’s great that more and more the major retailers are expanding their sugar free confection set and giving us the opprotunity to have our product placed in more wider and mainstream sections.