Foodies will be pleased to here that the boutique chocolate retailer Cacao Sampaka, is planning to open its first UK outlets later this year.

The brand is part-owned by Ferran Adrià, the head chef of El Bulli, one of the world’s most celebrated Michelin 3-star restaurants which can be found near the town of Roses, Catalonia. As well as having equity in Cacao Sampaka, Adrià is also head of development for the brand. It already has a retail presence in Spain, Dubai and Tokyo.

Cacao Sampaka aims to open at least two combined café and retail outlets in Covent Garden and Canary Wharf by Oct­ober. A wider roll-out will follow; a full UK ecommerce website will be launched next week. As part of a campaign created by NR Communications, the brand has signed up TV make-up artists as brand ambassadors to help position it as the ‘celebrities’ chocolate’.

If you like the idea of marketing your businesses along chocolate lines, why not invest in some branded chocolate for your business. Sweets2order in conjunction with Gift Selection can supply great quality branded chocolate, that will really leave a sweet impression.

The branded chocolate that they offer may no be quite as posh as what you’ll find in El Bulli, but rest assured it is made either here in the UK or on the continent, you won’t find any dodgy Chinese confectionery being offered. Whether you’re looking for little Neapolitans branded, chocolate bars, or embossed boxes of truffles; talk to their friendly team who will be able to help.

We love promotional confectionery here, while one leading supplier is Gift Selection, who only supply quality branded confectionery items from the Continent or the UK.  The down side of ordering branded sweets from Europe however is the relatively high long lead times involved.

However Gift Selection in conjunction with Sweets2order have recently brought out a line of branded sweets, that our available with super quick lead times. The popular ‘Creative Sweet’ or wrapped boiled sweet, is now available on an express service, which means your order will be made in just three working days.

The beauty of these branded sweets is the individual photo quality printing, which is ideal if you have a vibrant message you want to get across to your consumers. The minimum order quantity on these popular branded sweets is the usual 25kg (approx 4,000 pieces), while shelf life is a respectable two years.

Branded sweets and promotional confectionery in general make novel marketing ideas for mailers, or they can make your exhibition stand even more eye catching. If you have questions at all about branded express sweets, contact the friendly confectionery experts over at Gift Selection.

Controversial confectionery supplier Nestle has announced that Kit Kat bars will be Fairtrade certified from 2010. They have launched a print ad campaign to coincide with the certification, carrying the line ‘Have a break, have a Fairtrade Kit Kat’.

The ad explains Nestle’s on-going sustainability drive, ‘The Cocoa Plan’, through which it promises to invest £65m over the next 10 years to increase agricultural assistance, promote sustainable farming methods and improve social conditions for farmers working in the Ivory Coast.

Funnily enough it doesn’t mention their; marketing of processed cow’s milk as a substitute for breastfeeding, their connection with Robert Mugabe, selling of contaminated animal feeds, GM ingredients, child labour and price fixing. On the other hand their Kit Kat Chunky caramel bars are bloody good.

If you are looking for promotional chocolate items, that have to be specifically Fairtrade certified then this is something that sweets2order can help you with. They have a range of explicitly ethically manufactured chocolate items that are great for promotional use. The most popular is their branded Fairtrade hot chocolate sachets, which I think would make a great mailer for this time of year. If you have any questions at all about branded confectionery, contact the friendly team over at sweets2order.

I’m sure you’ve all seen branded mints before, such as branded mint cards or printed clic clacks. However if you’re looking for some branded mints that are more recognisable, then we can now offer Tic Tacs with bespoke packaging!

They were first produced in 1969 and have been a popular product throughout their history. They are usually sold in small transparent plastic boxes with a flip-action living hinge lid. Originally, Tic Tacs were dyed the specific colours, such as green, red or orange. Now, in many countries, the transparent plastic boxes are coloured for the specific flavours and the actual Tic Tacs inside are white.

Branded mints are a breath of fresh air (sorry), but on a serious note, they do create a novel and effective way of promoting practically any organisation. If you require any sort of branded mint, then contact the friendly promotional confectionery experts over at sweets2order who will be happy to help.

We get lots of enquiries from loved up couples wanting personalised sweets for there upcoming wedding. However as I’m bitter and single I refuse out of spite. On a serious note we can very rarely progress, because of the general high minimum quantities required for promotional confectionery.

Very often we can get asked for promotional rock sweets for example, the problem being that people generally want a couple of hundred and the minimum order being a couple of thousand.

However we are now able to supply promotional sweet jars from low minimum quantities, which would make an ideal finishing touch to a wedding. There’s nothing new about personalised jars, however now they are able to be filled with practically any confectionery item.

Now there is a fantastic choice of sweets on offer, of course there are traditional sugar almonds or love hearts, but now you are only limited by your imagination. Not only can you pick which sweets you want in your personalised jars, you can also pick the colours.

Now you can have the jelly beans matching the bridesmaid’ dresses! If you want to know more about promotional confectionery for your wedding (or civil partnership, bar mitzvah, funeral etc) then contact the friendly confectionery experts at sweet2order.

It’s nearly that time of year again, when youths will be huddling around your doorstep, threatening you with the demand of either a trick or a treat. Halloween promotional confectionery is available in all shapes and sizes, but my favourite Halloween promotion are the personalised chocolate lollies from sweets2order.

You can have a completely bespoke chocolate lolly from sweets2order for less then you think, however there is an extraordinary choice of Halloween themed moulds to choose from anyway. On their site are all the traditional favourite Halloween shapes, such as chocolate Frankensteins and pumpkins to ghosts and vampires.

The level of detail on these Halloween chocolate lollies really is impressive, allowing you to have any sort of spooky chocolate treat you wish. Not only do these branded chocolate lollies look great  - they taste great too. Sweets2order don’t just allow any old rubbish to go into making your next chocolate gravestone lolly you know! All the branded Halloween lollies, are created from hand made Belgian chocolate.

To brand your Halloween chocolate lolly you can of course have a bespoke design that has your logo integrated into it. However there are different branding options available, depending on your budget and taste. You can have your Halloween lolly personalised by simply adding a full colour sticker to the outer packaging, or having a vibrant card insert behind the lolly too.

Choose from milk chocolate, white chocolate or you can even have orange chocolate for your little branded chocolate pumpkins. If you want to test the quality of the seasonal confectionery from sweets2order, just get in contact with their friendly team who will be happy to help.

Now here’s some promotional products that really take the biscuit (sorry). United Biscuits UK is set to launch a £2m marketing campaign across; McVitie’s Digestives, Jaffa Cakes, HobNobs and Penguin themed around the search for the UK’s favourite biscuit.

Their new marketing campaign kicks off in August, and is inspired by the good old British public’s love of biscuits. Their novel plan is entitled ‘Bonkers about Biscuits’, it comprises an eight-week daily giveaway of £5,000 backed by a TV ad campaign and targeted radio.

The promotional packs will be available from 16 August for a limited period. To enter the daily prize draw to win a share of £5,000, consumers have to enter a bespoke code from the back of a promotional pack along with their favourite McVitie’s biscuit on www.bonkersaboutbiscuits.com to be in with a chance to win. The great thing about this fun promotion, is that they will keep track of the votes via a game show themed creative.

If you see on their bonkers about biscuits promotional mugs around, and you like the quality of them, then The Mugstore are the clever chaps supplying them. If you’re looking for promotional mugs to promote your brand like McVities have, then give the friendly team at Mugstore a ring.

Obviously they wouldn’t reproduce what they had made for McVities for your businesses, but having your organisations artwork on the same promotional mug would be no problem at all.

I love these little branded tins of sweets, as there both an effective and a delicious marketing tool. The aptly named Best Value Box from sweets2order, is one of their most popular promotional confectionery items.

These branded best value boxes are professional looking pieces of promotional confectionery, that are fun for all kinds of organisations. A branded best value box from, has approximately 65g of sweets inside, and is available from as little as 200 pieces. When ordering these branded boxes of confectionery, your price will be determined by your choice of personalisation method.

If you want your branded best value box printed, then choose between one, two, three, four spot colours or have them printed digitally in razor sharp in full colour. On the hand you may wish your promotional best value boxes to be engraved, which would be particularly stylish if your logo is only in one colour anyway.

Just to complicate things, there isn’t just one set price for engraving these promotional sweet tins. In a nutshell the more you have these best value boxes engraved, the more expensive these promotional mint tins will be.

For professional looking confectionery that is something a little out of the ordinary, these branded sweet tins are well worth considering. For more information regarding branded sweet tins, contact the friendly team over at www.sweets2order.com.

What could be more innocent then a promotional lolly pop - a fun piece of corporate confectionery, that you would have to have a heart of stone not too enjoy. What sweetso2rder doesn’t know about corporate lollypops isn’t worth knowing. They can supply practically any kind of promotional lolly you could think off.

If you know exactly what you require, then ring the friendly team up at sweets2order and bark your order down the phone, and they will quickly prepare it, faster then you can click your fingers. On the other hand, maybe you’re a new comer to the exciting world of promotional lollies. Well they will talk you through the wild and exciting possibilities open to you and your organisation.

You can have your promotional lollipop branded in so many different ways, the possibilities are practically endless. You can have the packaging branded or the lolly itself branded. Now when I say the packaging, I mean either printing the cellophane wrapping directly or a have sticky label stuck on, or some cardboard behind the lolly, or maybe a card box that goes over the top of the lolly. Still not enough choice? OK what about printing the foil that wraps around it, or the cardboard stand that they sit in…

For corporate lollies in all shapes, sizes and flavours – contact www.sweets2order.com – you’ll get more advertising for your lolly.

If somebody gave me some branded ballotin chocolates, I personally would be a happy chap. The problem with branded ballotin boxes is that they can often be too expensive, for many organisations.

However help is at hand from www.sweets2order.com, who have recently launched some more affordable branded ballotin chocolate boxes. They have a two chocolate and four chocolate version (obviously I think the four chocolate version is the way forward). Some more upmarket bars and hotels make use of branded ballotin chocolates as a neat little marketing tool, that should give off the right kind of impression to new and existing customers alike.

If you’re interested in some branded ballotin boxes, depending on your budget you can choose from three personalisation options. The cheapest option is to have it simply printed in spot colours, while if you have tints and tones in your logo you can have it printed in full colour. My favourite method is to have the chocolate box foil blocked, which is only a little more expensive, and I think will make your brand will appear in a great light.