Member Spotlight: Living Koko
Lolopō Phoebe Preuss and husband Glen Reiss started Living Koko 10 years ago.
Five years ago, they took a 200 year family history of working with cacao and transformed the Living Koko name into a brand that not only creates delicious cacao and chocolate products, but also supports more than 400 domestic plot farmers in the Pacific Islands.
Lolopō Phoebe Preuss was bestowed a Chief title from her village, Vaiusu, late last year.
Venture Melton caught up with Lolopō Phoebe to learn more about Living Koko and it’s celebration of community, culture and cacao.
Tell us the story of your business.
Living Koko started 10 years ago, with products being made in Mackay. Five years ago, we took over the tools and started making the chocolate/cacao products.
Indigenous cultivation and the post harvesting processes is something I understood but making chocolate was completely new to us. My family has over 200 years document history in plantations. My family are from the village Vaiusu in Samoa.
Living Koko was birthed to help create overseas markets for our cacao farmers in Samoa. Many are subsistence farmers who are really vulnerable to climate change. Koko means cacao but koko (toto) also means blood, Living Koko means living the continuing story of all of our bloodlines.
We started with small imports of 300-400kg of beans per year. During covid I worked on the business full time and we grew from working with 10 farmers to over 400 domestic plot farmers in the Pacific Islands. We have now grown from that original 300kg to 7000kg and growing.
Living Koko are now the largest importers of cacao from Samoa to Australia. We work in partnership with Savaii Koko, a family cacao plantation and post harvesting processing area in the village Asau on the island Savaii in Samoa. Locally, we are now operating out of our factory in Ravenhall, supported by our team Audrey Moala and Bhavani.
How did you come into this area of business.
I have always been in Community Cultural Development and when Glen and I started the business it was with a heart-led community perspective. Not just about how do we make good cacao products and sell them, but how do we make sure that there is a shared valued approach to our business and everyone along the value chain feels honoured and supported.
While my family have been in cacao for generations, Glen and I wanted to create something that didn’t follow the typical capitalistic framework of running a food product business. We wanted to make sure it wasn’t just farm to table but literally planet/earth to table/community so that we are all better off.
What are some of the challenges you’ve experienced?
Wow, what hasn’t been a challenge to get us to this point? Expanding the business during Covid meant that the prices of everything from factory fit out to shipping went through the roof. Not only, that but being self funded, we were working our day jobs to raise the capital for equipment, beans, packaging etc.
What has surprised you in the business?
I love my business and the role that it plays, but it surprises me everyday how fast paced this world can be and how overwhelming running a business can be.
It’s tricky to stay on track, I didn’t want to just create a transactional space, so I need to make sure that my values of building trusting relationships to support everyone’s continuing growth are something that I never let go of.
What’s coming up next for your business?
We have a host of wellness events coming up and also a tour to Samoa for those who want to walk through our plantations, connect to culture and our oceans.
I love to encourage peoples connection to our natural resources. The more we connect with them, the more we honour them, the more we will want to protect them and become activists for climate action.
We’d love to see you at one of our upcoming events:
Pasifika Movement & Cacao - 24 March 2024
Evolution - Rest and Restoration - 4 April 2024
Koko & Konnect with Living Koko tour - Starts March, dates coming soon
Samoa Koko Tour - 5 - 10 August 2024 Trip to Samoa for plantation and ocean tour
Any final words for our readers?
We are chocolate makers but we are really community development practitioners that want to support the wellbeing of our community.
We create cacao products but we also run wellness events to help us build deeper relationships with ourselves while enjoy a healthier version of chocolate and traditional Pacific Island plant medicines.
Aligning your heart led values with your business is hard in this world but not impossible. We would love to see more people doing this.
How can people get in touch with you?
IG: @living_koko
FB: @livingkoko