Global awards for Forest Feast, Craigavon’s innovator in delicious snacks

Based in Craigavon, Forest Feast, a luxury snack brand of the family owned and managed Kestrel Foods, was the only Northern Ireland company to feature in this year’s prestigious Academy of Chocolate Awards, a global challenge for fine chocolate.

Among winning entries from many parts of the world selected by a panel of expert judges, Forest Feast was awarded three bronze awards for its dark chocolate coated cherries; blonde chocolate caramelized hazelnuts and salted dark chocolate cashews.

It’s the first time Forest Feast has been named in the awards. Deirdre McCanny of CoCouture in Belfast was the first local winner, gaining an award for her luxury drinking chocolate in 2016. Lawri Dowie of 10 Watch Chocolates in Randalstown won awards last year for his truffles.

Forest Feast’s marketing director Bronagh Clarke says the company was “thrilled to have such global recognition for our unique chocolate-coated fruit and nuts.”

“We’ve invested extensively to produce the quality of real chocolate that the independent Academy of Chocolate promotes worldwide,” she adds. The academy works closely with manufacturers, producers and retailers “to raise awareness and understanding of the role chocolate plays in society and overall wellbeing”. The academy “showcases great taste, encourages sustainable and ethical production, and provides educational opportunities”.

Founded in 2005 by five of Britain’s leading chocolate professionals, the academy campaigns for better chocolate and to promote a greater awareness of the difference between fine chocolate and mass-produced confectionery.

It encourages chocolate lovers to look “beyond the label” to differentiate between chocolate confectionery and ‘real’ chocolate. It also seeks a fair deal for cocoa bean plantations in developing nations by encouraging transparent sourcing from the plantations and their production in socially fair and environmentally undamaging conditions.

The academy stresses that chocolate is made from a fruit, the cocoa bean, with flavours that can be just as subtle if they are not masked in sugar and fat.

Images

Michael: Michael Hall, managing director of Kestrel Foods in Craigavon. The family company has won prestigious Academy of Chocolate Awards for its original Forest Feast snack foods

Cherries: Dark chocolate cherries – one of the award-winning Forest Feast chocolate coated fruit and nut snacks