How To Sell Homemade Chocolates On Amazon (Complete Guide)
Chocolates are not food, they are emotions. In Fact, they are a package of emotions. How? Well, if you are sad, have chocolate, and you will become happy. If you want to express love, give chocolate. If you want to show happiness, eat chocolate.
Whatever the situation is, chocolate always makes things easier and sweeter. So, if you have the skill to make people happier with homemade chocolates, why not give them a try? You can begin your homemade chocolate business and spread delicious happiness.
If you have no idea how to begin a business, particularly a chocolate business, this article is what you need. Other than the tips to sell homemade chocolate on Amazon, the article will also help you to understand the different aspects of an online business. You will also learn about the underrated benefits of having your own site that you can create through various sites, such as the Fynd platform.
Handmade Chocolate Market In India
Before beginning any business, the first and foremost thing is to understand the market of that particular product. You will understand the importance of this in the further section. Before that, here is a look at the handmade chocolate market in India.
An article published in The Hindu, titled, ‘Market booming for handmade chocolates’, mentions, “Every year, when thousands of tourists visit the Nilgiris for vacation, one item that many of them would want to take back home is the homemade, Ooty chocolates.” S.M. Fazloor Rehman, director of M&N goodies explains that better awareness is the key reason behind the booming chocolate market, particularly homemade ones, in India. Initially, chocolate was an occasional thing for India. But not any more.
Today, you do not consume chocolates only on Raksha Bandhan or when you top the college. You consume chocolate because you want to. For youths, chocolates have become a part of their life. They share and consume chocolate to express their day-to-day emotions.
The IMARC group shares an overview on their official page, that mentions, “The India chocolate market reached a value of US$ 2.2 Billion in 2021 with the country currently representing one of the world’s fastest growing markets for chocolates. Looking forward, IMARC Group expects the market to reach US$ 3.8 Billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 9.1% during 2024-2027.”
The various driving factor of the chocolate market in India includes:
1. With strong economic growth in the past decade, the per capita income of India has increased. This means that consumers have the capacity to spend more on things they earlier used to avoid. One such thing is chocolate.
2. India is home to millions of people, almost half of them at the age below 25 years. This population segment is the key chocolate consumer. Moreover, the second key consumer is the age group below 35, which is two-thirds of India’s total population.
3. With western culture taking over, people are opting for chocolates as a gift on occasions. Moreover, during festivals too, they prefer to eat different types of chocolates like the western countries.
4. The growing trend of bakery products is another significant driving factor for the chocolate business. Bakery products are slowly becoming a part of life. Indians love to bake a chocolate cake for small occasions and decorate it with melted chocolate.
5. Lifestyle change is another factor driving chocolate consumption. Earlier who might not see a stall selling hot chocolate or double chocolate shake? But now Instagram is full of videos of stalls, restaurants, and cafés selling a variety of chocolate shakes.
Other than this value addition and boost in the food service sector has also contributed to driving chocolate sales. While there is demand for the product, there are competitors too. Unfortunately, not only local or small competitors, to set up a successful chocolate business you have to give a strong fight to big competitors too.
With all these disadvantages, home chocolate makers have an advantage too. If people love your product and find it different from what is available in the market, they will pay you the price of your choice. This means you can earn a good margin on your product.
Every business owner knows that before beginning the business, they should know everything about their product. This means, you should know where chocolates come from or the processing of chocolates. The next section will help you with it.
From Cocoa To Choco
Have you ever thought about where chocolate comes from? Is there a chocolate land where chocolate flows like a river? Well, if you are beginning a chocolate business, you supposedly already know the answer. They come from seeds of the fruits of Theobroma trees, popularly known as cacao trees. Native to Mesoamerica, these trees thrive in the range of 20 degrees south and north of the equator.
They demand a hot and humid climate to grow properly. These trees bear oval-shaped fruits that look like a pod. These fruits are nearly 12 inches long and contain almost 50 cocoa beans (the seeds inside them are known as cocoa beans).
If the words cocoa and cacao confuse you, do not worry. They are literally the same thing with a hairline difference. Cocoa means the fresh beans taken out of the fruit or pod. On the other hand, cacao means fermented bean.
Now After You Have Cultivated A Cocoa Tree, It Is Time To Understand The Process After This.
Here is a step-by-step chocolate processing system.
1. Harvesting the Beans
After a few months of cultivating cocoa, you will see fruits coming out of it. Then these fruits will turn into bright, vibrant orange/ yellow colour, indicating that they are ripe. Typically, the harvesting cycle of these pods is twice a year, you can harvest them throughout the year.
Once the process of harvesting pods is over, you have to open each pod or fruit individually to take the seeds out. These seeds are very small in shape. They come covered in white flesh that is sticky. This white flesh, popularly known as BABA, has a bitter, sour taste. Manufacturers have come up with ways to use it to make cocoa wine.
2. Fermentation of the Beans
After taking out the seeds, you need to clean them with your hands. But the process does not affect baba. You have to leave baba there as it helps to develop a flavour. After leaving them in light, you will gradually notice a change in their creamy texture.
They will begin turning into a hue of purple. This process will approximately take two to nine days. You can ferment beans in two ways. One is the Cascading box method and the other is the heap method. Africans usually use the heap method.
They leave cocoa beans in a heap on the ground. On the other hand, Latin Americans use a cascading method. They keep cocoa beans in a box and stack those boxes over each other.
The similarity between the two processes is the use of banana leaves. Africans and Americans both cover these beans with banana leaves. This method is responsible for the dark and rich mahogany colour and signature aroma of chocolates.
3. Shipping and Drying Cocoa Beans
After the fermentation process, comes the drying process. For drying, you have to keep the beans on a Bamboo mat or wooden planks for seven to fourteen days. Make sure the beans are in the blazing hot sun.
Also, you have to keep changing or shuffling the beans for consistent drying. After drying, manufacturers segregate them on the basis of their mouldiness, saltiness, and acidity. After this, the cocoa cultivators pack the beans around the ship around the globe.
4. Roasting the Beans
The fermented and dried beans reach production units or chocolate factories for the roasting process. Roasting is a significant process in chocolate production as it makes the process of winnowing easier by smoothing the outer husk from the inner beans.
This process also leads to a chemical reaction that multiplies the flavour of the beans and also gives it a chocolate aroma. Moreover, roasting also helps to discard the smell of vinegar that comes from fermentation.
A significant thing to note is that the raw cocoa beans will not give a chocolaty taste, but roasted ones will develop a taste of chocolate. This process is also significant in the way that it prevents the growth of microbial organisms.
It is tough to follow this process at home if you plan for bulk production. This process needs a heavy machine, known as a Micronizer, that roasts and heats the beans simultaneously for a consistent roasting.
5.Winnowing and Cracking the Cocoa
Cracking is the process that involves removing the hard skin or shell from the roasted beans. Without this step, the chocolates will not get their smooth consistency. The skin is not too hard, and you can peel them by hand.
But before peeling, it is important to crack the beans. For this, subject them to a limited pressure that is enough to break cooled beans. There are two machines for this process. One is a Cocoa manual machine and the other is a Cocoa power cracker.
The Cocoa manual machine is for small cocoa bean batches. It is a very basic cracking model. So if you aim to have advanced technology, aim for a Cocoa power machine. This machine has the capacity to crack more than sixty pounds of cocoa at a time.
After cracking, the winnowing process begins. Winnowing is the method through which most Indian households separate dust or waste from wheat, poha, or pulses. Actually, the seeds of cocoa are heavier than the outer shell or skin.
So to remove the skin or shell, a blow of air is passed through the seeds. With the air, the lighter shell gets blown away, leaving the inner seeds. While you can carry out this process at home too, most factories use heavy machines for winnowing.
6. Grinding the Beans
Before the grinding process, comes the crushing process. The beans without shells are crushed partially. The key reason behind this is to make things easier for grinding by crushing seeds in as small parts as possible.
During this process, seeds are given a coarse grainy texture. Without efficiently crushing the seeds, there is a risk that the cocoa butter will seep out. After crushing, grind the beans. Most production units use a heavy machine with features to adjust the grinding speed.
This is a slow process. You cannot grind a lot of beans in one go, otherwise the flavour of the chocolate might get affected because the machine becomes extremely heated during grinding.
7. Conching the Ground Beans
Coaching is an umbrella term that involves kneading, rolling, aerating, and heating cocoa beans. A machine, called a conch, smooths and stirs the ground cocoa beans while subjecting them to heat.
The efforts and time you give to this process widely affect the taste and aroma of chocolate. The step is a significant part to produce consistent bars. In this process, manufacturers leave the mixture to heat for several hours, sometimes even days.
The mixture in this process involves cocoa butter, cocoa, milk solids (derived from milk chocolate), and sugar lecithin (an emulsifier). The purpose is to heat the mixture to a temperature of 110 to 180 Fahrenheit (82.22 °C). This gives the chocolate a delicious flavour.
8. Tempering the Cocoa
The final step is tempering the cocoa, actually chocolate. The process simply re-establishes the crystals of cocoa butter in the chocolate. This process ensures sturdy bars to give a delicious taste when you take a bite of your chocolate bars.
The process of tempering is quite complicated. There are machines, popularly known as cooling tunnels that subject chocolate to varying temperatures, taking it from ambient air temperature to 44-45 Fahrenheit and then back to the initial temperature.
There are various other tempering methods. Also, the different types of chocolates, that is milk chocolate, dark chocolate, or white chocolate demands different temperature shifts in the tempering process.
9. Moulding the Bars
Okay so now your chocolate is ready. It is time to give them a shape. You can pour the liquid into any kind of mould and give it the shape of your choice. After pouring, tap the mould once or twice. This gives an even filling in the moulds and also discards the air bubbles.
Let the mould cool by freezing them for a few hours. Garnish the chocolate and give it the taste, flavour, or design of your shape. After the tempering process, creativity is in your hand. Here is where your business can get an edge.
There are infinite chocolate sellers selling their chocolates on Amazon or online. But the way you present your chocolate or combine it with other ingredients will make it different from the other brands.
But is this much information about chocolate enough to begin a business? Absolutely not! Selling a product that already has a saturated market requires detailed knowledge of that field.
You should know the various types of chocolates available in the market and their taste. You can use these chocolates, mix them, and use them in your recipes in different ways. It will help you to come up with creative handmade chocolate products.
Types Of Chocolate
The journey to begin a homemade chocolate business is not easy. Other than learning about the process to make chocolates and sell them, you have to understand a lot of things about chocolate. The first among them is the types of chocolates. Here is a detailed list for your reference.
1. Milk Chocolate
One of the most popular types of chocolate you will find everywhere is milk chocolate. You can easily differentiate milk chocolate from other categories from their distinct taste and look. They have a lighter colour than other chocolates.
Also, they taste comparatively sweeter than other chocolates. These milk chocolates are a combination of cocoa powder, milk, and sugar. The milk could be either condensed or milk solids. In these chocolates, the chocolaty taste takes a backhand. While they have great taste, they are not idle for baking. This is because overheating does not suit them.
2.White Chocolate
Other than any cocoa product or chocolate liquor, white chocolate contains only cocoa butter. Like milk chocolate, these chocolates also do not taste like chocolate. Instead, they have a taste of smooth vanilla.Their ingredient composition includes 15 percent milk solids, 55 percent sugar, and almost 20% cocoa butter. These chocolates are widely used for baking.
3. Dark Chocolate
One of the most popular chocolate categories is dark chocolate. They contain a combination of cocoa butter, chocolate liquor, and sugar. To emulsify the product and give it a flavour, manufacturers also add lecithin and vanilla respectively.
These chocolates lack milk solids. A dark chocolate bar can contain cocoa in a range of 30 to 80 per cent giving it a rich chocolate taste. While many people love dark chocolate, sweet tooth are often not a fan of these bitter-tasting choco bars. The two key types of dark chocolate are semisweet chocolate and bittersweet chocolate. You will learn about it in the next two sections.
4. Semisweet Chocolate
This is a type of dark chocolate. There is no official rule for the composition of semisweet chocolate. In general, semi sweet chocolate contains 35 percent cocoa solid, but the amount might vary. To get an idea, you can consider semisweet chocolate as a chocolate type that is between sweet dark and bittersweet chocolate.
While a lot of people use these chocolates for baking, you need to be careful. Read the recipe carefully to determine whether it requires semisweet, baking, or bittersweet chocolate.
5. Bittersweet Chocolate
Another type of dark chocolate is bittersweet chocolate. The Food and Drug Association, an American federal organization that regulates food and drugs in the United States, rules that bittersweet chocolate must contain a minimum of 35% of cocoa.
However, most bittersweet chocolate contains almost 50 to 80% of cocoa. This chocolate has a deeper and bitter flavour. Only people who can consume black coffee can survive a bar of bittersweet chocolate!
6. Unsweetened Chocolate
As the name suggests, this is an unsweetened delight. It is a pure chocolate liquor composed of ground cocoa beans. You cannot consume this chocolate directly, Thus most bakers use it to give a rich chocolate taste to their products.
Sometimes chefs or bakers also combine this product to give it a consumable taste. While most people believe that pure chocolate tastes fantastic, this chocolate tells that pure chocolate might not give a treat to your taste buds. However, their ability to mix with other ingredients and give a deep chocolate taste is unmatchable. Apart from this, these chocolates are also a base for almost all other chocolate types.
7. Cocoa Powder
Cocoa powder is simply cocoa without any cocoa butter extract. You can not directly eat the cocoa powder. However, it is a prominent material in most chocolate recipes. You might have used this powder several times while baking a cake, blending a shake, or as a garnishing product on coffee.
This chocolate product is popular because of its ease of use. With other chocolate types, you have to put effort into mixing them into anything. You will either need to melt them or churn them with other products. On the other hand, cocoa powder easily gets mixed, making the process comfortable for people.
A significant thing to note about the cocoa powder is that most cocoa powder does not contain sugar, known as unsweetened cocoa powder. However, you might also find sweetened cocoa powder in the market.
8. Sweet German Chocolate
It is dark chocolate particularly manufactured for baking purposes. Samuel German, the manufacturer of sweet German chocolate and also the person who named the product manufactured this chocolate to make things convenient for bakers by adding sugar directly to the product.
This chocolate is comparatively sweeter than semisweet chocolate. While a lot of people use it, this chocolate is common for German chocolate cake with several layers of chocolate cake with gooey, sweet frosting in the middle and pecans and coconut topping.
9. Couverture Chocolate
This is an expensive chocolate type with a higher amount of cocoa butter than any other chocolate variety. The high percentage of cocoa butter makes it a variety that melts evenly and quickly. This makes this chocolate a perfect product for making candies and tempering. These couverture chocolates are available in three main categories: dark, white, and milk couverture chocolates.
10. Ruby Chocolates
First manufactured in September 2017, in the neighbouring country China, Ruby chocolate is the newest chocolate variety on the market. It has a rosy hue that comes from the ruby cocoa beans, found naturally in almost every part of Ecuador, and Brazil.
This chocolate gives a taste of cherry blended with white chocolate without using these ingredients in the recipe. While there is no point in selling these chocolates directly, it was important for you to know about it. This will help you to enhance your chocolate business by creating a range of chocolate recipes.
So now you know a lot about chocolates. You know how beans become delicious chocolates and how different types of chocolate taste. So can you now sell chocolates? Of course not! Before selling there are many processes that you need to follow. You will learn about it in the next section.
Before The Selling Process
Starting a chocolate business on Amazon or on your own site will require a lot of formalities. With these steps, you will learn all the requirements to sell handmade chocolate on Amazon or on your own site.
- Make a business plan that includes all your requirements, such as raw materials, land, labour, storage, etc,
- Take necessary licences. You will read about this step in detail in the subsequent section. But make sure if you want bulk production and set up a factory, you should have permissions for that too.
- Research your competitors. When you enlist your product on Amazon, you would not only be competing with big chocolate sellers, such as Nestle or Cadbury. You might also be competing with your nearby local bakery. So, make sure you organize detailed research on your competitors.
- Know your target audience. While chocolate is everybody's favourite, not everyone is fond of homemade chocolate. Also, there may be only a small section that loves the flavour of chocolate you sell. So, you should learn everything about your target audience.
- The better you will know your target audience, the better your business will perform.
After you arrange the requirements and other details, shift to selling chocolates on Amazon.
How To Sell On Amazon
For food products and other highly sensitive categories, Amazon seller services private limited has various regulations for sellers. Amazon ensures that a seller could only enlist quality products.
The company has various additional compliance checks for all food sellers, including chocolates. This means unlike other sellers, such as agarbatti sellers, merchant sellers, etc, a food seller cannot easily make a seller account, enlist products, and begin selling.
Here Are The Steps You Will Need To Follow To Sell Homemade Chocolates On Amazon.
1. Register Yourself
The first step involves registering yourself as an Amazon seller. For this purpose you will need two things, they are an active bank account to pay and receive payments and a GST number. To register, you can click on this link and provide the details of your GST number and bank account.
2. Enlist your Chocolates
The next step involves enlisting your handmade chocolates on Amazon. In simple words, you need to show your consumers what you are selling by enlisting the products from your Amazon seller account.
Here there are two possible cases. First, your product is already available on Amazon and secondly when you are enlisting a product that is not on Amazon. Both products require different steps. You can read more about it on the official page of Amazon.
While the process to enlist these two types of products is different, the requirements for both of them are the same. You will learn about the certificates and licences required in this process through further sections.
Once you will upload those certificates and licences you will need to click on the request for approval option. Once Amazon Checks and approves your certificate, you can enlist your products.
You can enlist your handmade chocolates, but there are some products that Amazon does not allow on their site. You can check the list of unallowed items through this link. Make sure you do not enlist anything mentioned in this list.
3. The Delivery Process
Once you enlist the products, your consumers can now see what you sell. But how will your products reach them? How will your chocolates reach from your freezer to their almirahs? Yes, you need to decide your delivery method too.
Amazon offers three delivery options that you can choose from. They are:
1. Fulfilment by Amazon
A simple way to understand FBA is to think of yourself as a producer. You are manufacturing your chocolates at your home. Then send it to Amazon’s warehouse. Now you don't have to look after your product.
You only need to pay Amazon for taking care of your products. Whenever a consumer will order your handmade chocolate, Amazon will pack it for you and will deliver it to your consumer. You will get paid for it in your account. Another benefit of FBA is that if your business is under it, your products will be prime eligible. This means prime members can get early delivery of your product and other benefits.
2. Easy Ship
To understand easy ships, consider yourself as a business store and Amazon as your delivery man. You are manufacturing your product, receiving orders from consumers, packing your product, and handing it over to Amazon to deliver it to the consumer. With Easy ship, Amazon will not handle your inventory. This means you have to arrange a storage space and take care of your stocks.
3. Self-ship
As the name suggests, here you will do every work. You will manufacture products, receive orders, pack the product, and ship it by your own means or third-party delivery system.
Amazon will only take orders from consumers through the website. If your product is listed under self-ship, prime members would not be able to take benefits.You need to choose between these three delivery options from Amazon. Besides the per-product charges, your facilities will also decide the amount you pay to Amazon from your business.
Receive Payment
Amazon offers 7 days payment cycles for groceries. This means you will receive the payment of your sold groceries in 7 days' payment cycles of Amazon. Another thing Amazon does to avoid any discrepancy is that they do not take payments from you.
Instead, they pay you for your sold products after deducting the fees of facilities that you take from Amazon. You get your amount in your registered bank account. In this way, you can sell handmade chocolates on Amazon. But before that, you all need to know the requirements of certificates and licences in the enlisting process.
Certificate And Licence Required
To ensure that your product is of good quality and will not affect the reputation of Amazon in any way, Amazon demands multiple certificates and licences. Here is a list of them.
FSSAI Licence
The first requirement is a licence from the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India. Here are a few things to check for this licence.
- The licence should be in either your name or your company name.
- During the time for requesting approval, your FSSAI licence should be valid for more than two years.
- The licence should include every food product or food product category that you intend to sell on Amazon. In the case of proprietary foods, your licence should include the term proprietary food in the food product category and subcategory.
If you do not know about proprietary food, you can click on this link to know the things that FSSAI considers proprietary food. Make sure your Amazon shopfront displays your FSSAI licence number. As per the regulation of FSSAI, it is compulsory for every business to mention their FSSAI licence number on the e-commerce site.
If you want to learn how to display your FSSAI number on Amazon, click on this link. If you already display your FSSAI licence number and only want to change it, you can click on this link to update.
ASINs List
You have to provide the list of products or Amazon standard identification numbers, their preferred storage temperature, whether it is important or organic, and their shelf life. Make sure you fill in these in a template. You can download the template from this link.
A Declaration
Yes, like you give an undertaking for anything, you have to submit an undertaking to Amazon to sell food items. Amazon has a particular template and according to it you have to submit a food declaration for your products. You can download the declaration through this link.
Images
While you can click the pictures of your homemade chocolate in the way you want, there are certain guidelines that you have to follow. You can read the guidelines in the imaging guidelines for food ASINs page. Moreover, the listing should also be according to the grocery style guide offered by Amazon. You can read the guide from this link.
So, these are the compulsory documents you will need to request for approval. After knowing the entire process for selling on Amazon, did this question strike you why you should enlist your product on Amazon? Well, there is an answer to that.
Why Sell On Amazon?
Being a profitable business with millions of consumers is a dream of every other business owner. When you decided to sell handmade chocolates, you might have also thought that your chocolate will become as popular as Monica’s candies and that all your neighbours and locals will praise you.
Well, Amazon helps perfectly to fulfil that dream. With Amazon, there is a possibility that thousands of consumers visit your store and see your handmade chocolate from day one. This is the reason millions of sellers try to make space on Amazon. But have you checked all the aspects of selling on Amazon?? Take these points.
- One day you see a reel on Instagram that an influencer is consuming your handmade chocolate, saying a product she/he purchased from Amazon. In that video, the influencer praised the product very much. This will definitely increase your consumer but without making any brand awareness.
- Now consider this. After a particular time of this incidence, your product becomes popular. Then you find a seller or Amazon itself selling similar chocolate as yours. Yes, many times Amazon has been accused of stealing the best-selling products.
- Many business owners believe that once their product becomes popular on Amazon or starts selling on a large level, Amazon begins manufacturing and selling the same product at a low price. This will directly affect your sales.
- Another factor to consider is the database. In modern times, nothing is more important than a database for an online business. Every digital platform, social media site, search engine, etc depends on the consumer database.
- These databases help these platforms to keep consumers stuck to them. They use it to make the content on the site personalized according to the past records of consumers. They also send notifications and emails to prevent consumers from forgetting their brand.
- With Amazon, you cannot get the database of consumers. This database goes to Amazon. The company then presents consumers with content on the site that they could relate to. Amazon might also send emails occasionally. But in all this, people will remember Amazon and not you or your homemade chocolate brand.
So, these are some things that you should think about before enlisting your products on Amazon. Now you might think, is there an alternative? Well, certainly there is! You can come up with your own site through various platforms, such as the Fynd platform. You might think about how these platforms will help you overcome the disadvantages of Amazon. The next section will help you find out.
Perks Of Having Your Own Site
Having a personal site offers significant benefits over Amazon. Here are some of those benefits.
1. Have a Control!
The most significant benefit your site will offer you is control over your product and your store. With Amazon, you are only allowed to enlist products, set prices, etc. But with your website, you can change your shopfront. You can make your shopfront more attractive. You can have full control over your store without any interference.
2. You will be the King
If a consumer searches for handmade chocolate on Amazon, hundreds of options will appear in front of him/her. They might make a purchase from anyone. On Amazon, you don't have an identity of your own. You are another handmade chocolate selling store. But with your website, you are the king. You just have to focus on marketing so that consumers can click on your link. Once they click on your link, they will be in your world. You will be the king there.
3. Database
With your website, you will have a database. Through that database, you can make your website stronger and also make a good network with your consumers. Keeping connected with your audience is a significant part of digital platforms. So, you can avail all these benefits by making a site of your own.
Fynd Platform
Most people avoid making a personal website because they fear that only tech people can do that. So, they might have to hire an extra guy to handle the tech. But this is not true. Nowadays, there are various sites that help to create a wonderful site without much headache.
One such platform is the Fynd platform. With this platform, you can easily make your own website and offer as many functions as you want. Another benefit is you do not need to be a tech person to set up your website. You only need to be creative.
Within a few minutes only, you will see a website of your own where you can sell homemade chocolates and also increase your brand awareness. While for people with their own website, it is quite tough to convince consumers to visit their site, efficient use of SEO techniques and content marketing can do wonders.
Conclusion
Amazon is the mall of millennials. They prefer to visit the store and purchase everything they want in one go. This means you will never run out of consumers if you begin selling on Amazon. But you cannot ignore the disadvantages it brings. Those disadvantages push most sellers to own their websites. You can do that too with the Fynd platform.