Logan City’s first Food Trails is well underway, with Poppy’s Chocolate in Beenleigh added to the enticing foodie’s list.
Executive Account Manager Joel Hall from Rebel Connect is organising the trail alongside council and advisories.
Poppy’s Chocolate in Beenleigh, Extraction Artisan Coffee at Slacks Creek, and Contemporary Cakes based out of Daisy Hill are all part of the Food Trails tour so far.
“I am so honoured to be working in partnership with the South East Queensland Council of Mayors and Logan City Council to make this project a success,” Mr Hall said.
Lynda Pedder, owner and founder of Poppy’s Chocolate, says she is super excited to be part of the first Logan City Food Trails.
“We’ve been part of an unofficial Food Trail for a long time but it’s great that new people will discover us through this,” she said.
The Chocolatier shop, which opened in 2005, spurred from a simple idea of Ms Pedder’s.
“I was on the search for some quality chocolates on the Gold Coast as a gift to myself in early 2005,” she said. “I had told my then-husband that if he ever wanted to do something romantic for me, he could simply buy me some good quality chocolates.”
Feeling disappointed with the lack of quality chocolate on the Gold Coast, Ms Pedder travelled further afield to Brisbane and Sydney, and still did not find the chocolate she was hoping for. With this in mind, she decided to open her own chocolate business, Poppy’s Chocolate, Poppy being a nickname from her mother.
“I would say when I first opened the business, I was just excited and probably a bit naïve about the difficult and challenging journey that would lay ahead,” she said. “But I have a passion for sweets and chocolates that I developed from making lots of sweets with my Nan when I was young, so you could say it is in my blood.”
Ms Pedder decided to buy a small chocolate business which had been making chocolates for airlines and hotels since 1993, with the goal of turning the shop into a premium chocolate supplier, and she did.
“I immediately started overhauling products,” Ms Pedder said. “I wanted them to just look amazing, but more importantly, they had to taste divine.”
After deciding to relocate the chocolate shop to Beenleigh from Brisbane, Ms Pedder then went on to buy a café on the Gold Coast, only 6 weeks after buying the chocolate business.
“I know that is pure insanity, but I had a grand vision,” she said. “We could convert the café into Queensland’s First Chocolate Cafe, ‘Choclicious’.
But after six years Ms Pedder decided to concentrate on wholesale, going on to sell ‘Choclicious’.
“Our wholesale business and the factory expanded over the years and needed more of our focus,” she said. “I love watching the joy our chocolates bring people through eating them or by gifting them…so when an opportunity came up to expand our factory into the adjacent unit, I was quick to decide we would also start selling directly to the public from the Beenleigh factory.”
Ms Pedder went on to open another shop at Robina Town Centre in 2016, and despite the challenges brought by 2020, the popularity of Poppy’s Chocolate has only grown.
“We were focusing on tourism until COVID hit and we had to cancel classes and tours,” she said. “We quickly pivoted to selling online and that has been incredible for our business as people all over Australia have discovered our chocolates, or locals have sent them to relatives interstate for gifts.
“We plan to continue to grow our online shop in 2021, and we also hope that people keep coming to see us as there is no substitute for seeing customers in person and the reaction they have when they walk in and smell the chocolate.”
Click HERE to read more about the South East Queensland Food Trails
