COVER STORY


reputation before the pair met, but their eventual partnership was driven by more than the prospect of working with a well- known chef. “I certainly knew of Brandon and his


reputation, which is phenomenal, before I met him,” Michael explains. “But he’s not just a great chef, he’s also commercial. He’s just a good partner.” The two met during the pandemic,


after Michael’s wife saw an article about Brandon and his at-home dining experiences. The business idea developed over


time, but Michael says the real scale of the opportunity became clearer when they began talking directly to the people they hoped to serve. “We actually started changing the


scaling of our investments when we started speaking to chefs and bakers and hoteliers,” he says. “We realised, ‘Oh, we’re solving


something.’ It’s not just a want. People want chocolate, but in the B2B space there’s a need and structural gaps, and supply chain issues, and customisation issues.” That distinction – between selling a


desirable product and solving a practical problem – became one of the most significant themes of the conversation. Michael describes a foodservice environment in which smaller customers can struggle to command the same attention from major suppliers as their largest accounts. “You can be a restaurant – if you’re not the biggest restaurant in the book of business, you might not get your chocolate for the week,” he says. Whether that problem is one of


availability, logistics or market volatility, the effect on a professional kitchen can be significant. Chocolate is not an incidental ingredient for a pastry chef or chocolatier. Changing a couverture can mean reformulating recipes, altering textures and adjusting production. For Brandon, consistency of both


product and supply is fundamental. “If you set a menu and sometimes the ingredients are there and sometimes they’re not, that’s a major problem,” he says. The founders believe that local


production can provide a closer and more responsive relationship with professional customers. Their argument is not that scale should disappear from chocolate manufacturing, but that it should be combined with proximity and flexibility. And this is where speaking to a chef


rather than simply a chocolate executive offers a genuinely different perspective. Brandon doesn’t discuss chocolate solely in terms of origin, price or market share. He talks about what happens to it next.


Brandon Olsen & Michael Held


What does the chef actually need? Chocolate is an extraordinarily versatile ingredient, but different applications require different technical characteristics. That is where Brandon sees one of the greatest opportunities for As We Do Chocolate. “Having a chef at the centre means


understanding what a chef actually wants, rather than simply telling them, ‘This is what we’ve got. Take it or leave it,’” he says. “We want to understand what chefs need in terms of flavour profiles and fat levels. It depends what you want to do with the chocolate – whether you’re enrobing, making ganache, baking or moulding. There are so many different variables.”


The conversation becomes particularly


compelling here because Brandon is speaking from the other side of the supplier relationship. “We can work with chefs and say, ‘If you want to do this, this is the best product for you. If you want to do something else, we have another option.’” For Michael, watching those


conversations has reinforced why the chef-led element is more than a marketing device. “I can sit with head bakers, pastry chefs and other chefs and watch Brandon have an actual conversation with them,” he says. “They’re speaking the same language.” Michael describes himself as the non-


chef in the partnership, and says that distinction matters. “When it comes to


AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2026 • KENNEDY’S CONFECTION • 15


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