Founded by art director Sandra Colamartino in 2008, the vision was (and still is) to create the world's most quirky, beautiful and delicious chocolate collections, one bar at a time.

The first ever product range was a set of Scottish chocolate bars designed to look like books. In the early days both the chocolate making and packaging was outsourced.

It wasn't long before this became frustrating as demand for the products grew. As a independent business (yes, we were broke), we had to be patient as we figured out solutions to have more control.

One massive challenge was knowing how much packaging to print. We had to pick only a few designs at a time and print 1000s of each to get the unit price down. Invariably we would have one or two winning designs, a couple that did OK, and two that bombed. When a design didn't sell, it was heartbreaking to see packaging ending up in landfill.

That's when we came up with a unique way to print our packaging in-house. This meant we could stay creative - trying lots of quirky ideas (some truly ridiculous). We eliminated almost all of our packaging waste overnight. Printing extremely small runs to order became our superpower!

With the demand for our chocolate so high, it was impossible for our local chocolate supplier to keep us in chocolate. This led to the decision to invest in our very own chocolate manufacturing facilities in Edinburgh.

A terrifying and exciting move (we're not going to lie), this was the jump off the cliff moment for Quirky Chocolate. By having our own in-house chocolate team, led by a professionally trained Head Chocolatier, Quirky Chocolate was now in a position to be creative with the chocolate making as well as the packaging.

Based in Scotland, the first task for our newly formed in-house chocolate team was to create a range of chocolate bars inspired by the flavours of Scotland.

A joy to create, the range is made from single origin sustainable cocoa, is palm oil free, and uses many ingredients sourced from other phenomenal Scottish suppliers. Presented in eye catching tartan wrappers that are fully recyclable, it’s Win Win all round for Scotland and the planet.

As Scottish chocolate manufacturers, we were often asked if we could make bespoke whisky (and gin) chocolates. Our chocolatiers set to work, and perfected a chocolate ganache that created beautifully smooth whisky and gin chocolates.

We've also developed our own totally bespoke plastic free, recyclable chocolate packaging. With our superpower being small runs, we've made it easy to trial own recipe chocolates. Simply send us your booze and we'll send it back to you in boxes of chocolate (we promise not to party with it).

As chocolate makers as well as creators, we thought how lovely it would be to feature the work of illustrators and artists to make the world's most beautiful collection of chocolate bars on the planet (you should know by now we like to think big).

This ongoing project is a labour of love and constantly evolving. We give a royalty fee direct to the artist for every bar sold, so by choosing their work, you're supporting not one but two independent businesses for the price of one. That feels good.

In recent years, we've been increasingly asked to create bespoke packaging for some truly incredible clients. By collaborating with companies who share our values, this has led to some beautiful bespoke products. To see a few examples, click here.

To give peace of mind to all that work with us, in 2024 we became a SALSA (Safe and Local Supplier Approval) accredited business. Granted to suppliers who are able to demonstrate to an auditor that they're able to produce and supply safe and legal food, and are committed to continually meeting the requirements of the SALSA standard.

With all of us needing to be more mindful of what we consume, we created our smallest most adorable product to date.

Our tiniest of bars, the micro bar is made and wrapped in an identical way to our bigger bars - and can be fully branded in small volumes (just like all our bars). We may just have invented the world's cutest miniature chocolate bar, we hope you agree.

To keep up with demand for our chocolate, this year we're investing in a wrapping machine which will massively speed up how we wrap our bars (all currently done by hand). This is going to allow team Quirky to spend less time wrapping and more time making chocolate. Yay!