SNACKSY started with six children and a recurring problem: finding a treat everyone could actually enjoy. Hear more from our Founder, Stella Aminova, as she explores the origins of SNACKSY, the challenges we've overcome and where we're headed.
My name's Stella Aminova and I'm the Founder of SNACKSY.
Over the years, I've become especially aware of how limited the choices could be for people navigating food allergies and dietary restrictions.
There were treats for everyone else... and then there were the alternatives.
And I wasn’t particularly interested in that hierarchy. I wanted chocolate made with more thoughtful ingredients, yes, but she also wanted it to feel like chocolate. Indulgent. Satisfying. Something you would choose because you wanted it, not because it happened to be the option available to you.
During COVID, I came across a small raw chocolate business in Cornwall. At a moment when much of the world was reconsidering what mattered, I saw the beginnings of the idea I'd been circling for years. I acquired the business and began reshaping it around a simple conviction. Making a treat more inclusive shouldn’t require making it less of a treat. That idea eventually became SNACKSY.
Of course, chocolate doesn't become a functioning business simply because people enjoy eating it! There have been countless challenges along the way with manufacturing, retailer conversations, shifting consumer tastes, and stretches when the vision was moving considerably faster than the logistics. But, I kept refining the product and the proposition, eventually moving the company’s headquarters to London and building SNACKSY around the overlap between indulgence and wellbeing.
Today, we've found an audience among people who care about ingredients — you — who are rightfully unwilling to settle for disappointing chocolate.
Which explains my favourite piece of customer feedback: “I can’t believe this is vegan.”
It’s only six words, but they contain the assumption I've been pushing against from the beginning. Somewhere along the way, we got used to treating dietary restrictions as a warning that pleasure might be compromised. And we need to stop that being the norm.
I want SNACKSY to known for making chocolate that people actually want to eat.