Delightful cacao creations

A business in Torquay North is devoting itself to the art of treats that not only taste good but are good for you.

Boutique manufactuer Manuko has been crafting premium organic products and raw chocolate delights for more than a decade, and now has a shopfront at its factory in the West Coast Business Park.

Founder Matthew Hardie grew up on an organic and biodynamic dairy farm but has taken a roundabout path to where the business is today.

He said the first seeds of Manuko were planted in 2007, when he was working as a risk consultant for Ernst & Young but with little job satisfaction.

“At that time, I was getting really passionate about healthy food and healthy living, so I’d go into the office with my almonds and goji berries in this little container – that was 2007, so it was very early in the whole wellness thing. In the Melbourne CBD, there was heaps of food all around you but I found it really hard to find geniunely heathy food; it was genuinely impossible.”

Undaunted, Hardie sketched out his vision of Manuko, which he described at the time as a “true food revolution”.

“Food that’s clean, organic, tastes incredible, doesn’t compromise on flavour, doesn’t compromise on our health, and it also contributes to a healthier future,” he said.

After travelling overseas for about two years – including meeting his now-partner Inga in Sweden, studying kung fu in China with Shaolin monks, and living in a yurt in Switzerland – Hardie returned to Melbourne and started working part-time with organic chocolate maker Loving Earth.

“I had an insight into food manufacturing and I was like ‘This is a great way to do what I want to do’,” he said.

Manuko’s cacao-based range includes several kinds of delectable bites and slices, and a variety of hot chocolates.

“You’re having an extraordinary product that brings you joy, it brings you a sense of flavour and amazement, and you feel good afterwards; and it contributes to a sense of health,” Hardie said.

He noted the idea of using cacao – the fundamental ingredient of chocolate – as the basis for his business came relatively late.

“I actually wasn’t eating chocolate in my twenties, because I was really into health, and then I realised chocolate’s good for you if you take out all the sugar and all the crap in it. Cacao’s a really healthy food product, so it just became the core of the business, which was kind of unintentional; it wasn’t the original plan. The original thing was organic food that tastes incredible, and then it just morphed into a cacao-based thing, and I’ve become increasingly passionate about chocolate.”

The cacao is sourced from small growers in Peru, and the other ingredients include organic carab from Australia, hazlenuts from Victoria’s High Country, and locally harvested pink lake salt.

“We’re trying to use the highest-quality ingredients,” Hardie said. “And sometimes we’ll pay twice the amount we could pay if we got a substandard ingredient, but it’s worth it because it makes it taste so much better.”

Manuko’s first bag of cacao was sold out of the couple’s one-bedroom Melbourne apartment in 2012.

The business grew slowly but steadily, from Hardie doing deliveries by bike leading to him approaching health food stores, Manuko’s first stall at the Torquay Farmers Market in 2015, Hardie quttiing his part-time job to go full-time with Manuko in 2017, Inga quitting her job to join him the next year, and the products being made in sucessively larger and larger spaces, including at a small warehouse in Thornbury for five years.

The couple moved from Melbourne to Torquay in 2019, and opened their factory in the West Coast Business Park in October 2021.

“It’s been a long, winding journey, and it’s felt like step by step by step, one new stockist… every bit, just learning how to make the products, and the process, and the delivery,” Hardie said.

Manuko products are now stocked in more than 100 stores across Australia and exported to Japan, and Hardie said the plan was to keep getting better.

“My focus is ‘How can we do great work in the world?’ It’s not just about being big and compromising on our core purpose. Our focus is continuing to make extraordinary products that bring joy to people’s lives and contribute to a healtier life.

“It could mean we’re stocking in supermarkets or we keep expanding, because we can have more of an impact that way.

“We’re getting an Italian chocolate machine at the end of July, which we’re really excited about, so we want to move more into the world of chocolate and start enrobing products in chocolate, and exploring what innovative products we could make.

“I feel like my job as the founder is to be true to our core purpose and not deviate from that.”

Manuko is at 7/1 Haystacks Drive, Torquay North, and the shopfront is open on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 1-5pm, and on Fridays from 9.30am-1.30pm.

For more information or to browse their online shop, head to manuko.com.au