Our story
It started with 20p and a Curly-Wurly.
The chocolates we remember aren’t special because they were perfect. They’re special because they became part of our memories.
When I was eight, I used to go to school by myself — two stops on the Tube from Finchley Road to Swiss Cottage. I was given a pound coin each day. A return ticket was 80p, which left exactly 20p for a Curly-Wurly on the way home.
Years later, when we set out to create Barnaby, we didn’t want to copy the past. We wanted to celebrate it. We took the flavours people already loved and reimagined them with better ingredients, small-batch production and a little more imagination. Chocolate that felt familiar, but tasted even better.
A small daily ritual
One pound.
80p for the Tube.
20p for joy.
Sometimes the smallest thing becomes the part you remember most.
02 — Every bar tells a story
Chocolate starts it.
Your story stays.
We print “story loops” and wrap them around every bar, so you can share a memory with friends and family: a holiday, a first date, the day you became parents, or the trip that went hilariously wrong. You name it.
“They didn’t stop talking about the message.”
That’s when we realised something important. The chocolate might make someone smile, but the story is what they remember. Every bar we make is designed to spark a memory, start a conversation or tell a story.
03 — The chocolate orange
My mum loved a Terry’s Chocolate Orange. My dad bought them when he was in the bad books, when he was in the good books — and also just because.
That’s what chocolate can do. It becomes shorthand for affection, apology, celebration and all the little moments in between.
What we’re here to do
Not just the tastiest.
The most meaningful.
We’re chefs first, so the chocolate has to be the best it can be. But our real goal is bigger: to make gifting more personal, and to remind people that the gifts we treasure most are never really about what’s inside the box.
From London to the Dorset coast.
I go by Barney. But whenever I travel down to see family in the West Country, I’m Barnaby.
As the name of our company, it feels more appropriate all the time. We’ve moved from London to the Dorset coast to make our chocolate — closer to family, closer to the place where “Barnaby” has always felt at home.
Barney / Barnaby
Make it personal