A shock for east London’s ‘chocoholics’ unwrapped this week with news that a popular bespoke chocolatier has shut up shop in Brick Lane and moved out of town.
Caitlin Paxton started her little chocolate-making enterprise in Bethnal Green in a small shop off Brick Lane in Cheshire Street, where she was doing a roaring trade with the Sunday street market crowds.
But her business needed room to expand and she found London premises too expensive.
“We loved the little shop in the East End,” Caitlin told the East London Advertiser. “But we had truly outgrown it.
“To find a place similar in size in London would have meant moving to the suburbs—so it seemed sensible to set up in another forward-thinking city.”
She found her niche on the south coast in Brighton, where Paxton Chocolate has melted into a new 700sq ft ‘wrapping’.
The bigger work space gives her scope to make more chocolate and experiment with new flavours, buying in different ingredients and expanding the ‘bespoke’ side of the business.
“This gives me more time to develop ideas,” she explains. “We can consider new ranges and focus on seasonal products for Easter.”
Caitlin opens a pop-up shop this week, opposite Brighton’s famous Royal Pavilion, to roll out her Easter range with eggs, truffles and butterfly-adorned signature thins—all hand-made goodies chocolate fans could once have bought down Cheshire Street.
But all is not lost. Caitlin plans pop-up shops back in London’s East End some time in the future.
“We haven’t forgotten our East End roots,” she promises.
Meanwhile, chocoholics will just have to make do with the local supermarket for their ‘fix’.
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