Full name: Mary-Ann O’Brien
Role: Founder of Lily O’Brien’s Chocolates
DOB: 8th September 1960
Birthplace: Waterford, Ireland
Twitter: @maobrien
Website: www.lilyobriens.com
Fun Fact: “Most of my weekends and school holidays are spent travelling the length and breadth of Ireland with my youngest daughter Molly and her horse ‘Riverview Annie’.”
I read that you learnt your craft from chefs and chocolatiers in South Africa and various parts of Europe? Could you tell us a little about the education of a chocolatier and what you learnt during your journey?
I was staying in a lovely boutique hotel, whale watching in a little town called Hermanus just outside of Cape Town. The daughter of the owner, Mandy, was making beautiful handcrafted chocolates in her kitchen, I made great friends with her and I spent my holiday with her being taught how to make chocolates.
It was fantastic, I was in love, I couldn’t believe this was something that I could do with my own hands. Mould, melt, create, whisk, mix, taste, dip, the possibilities were endless and I was completely hooked.
I went home and started making every sort of chocolate creation you can imagine. There were not enough hours in the day and once I had Lily in Bed I often stayed up until 3 in the morning experimenting. My friends became guinea pigs and as they got fatigued I moved into the farmers markets and the craft fairs. I spent about a year and a half perfecting my skills; I had 3 saucepans on the go constantly, milk, dark and white chocolate.
I travelled to Germany, France and Belgium, took some very good courses and visited as many chocolate factories as I could gain entry to around the world. I think you could describe this period of my life as one of total immersion.
You started in your kitchen in 1992, right? Could you tell us how you got from there to here?
Yes after I learned the skill of chocolate making I knew it was for me. I started making chocolates in my kitchen, in my flat in Carton House in Kildare, where I was constantly trying out new recipes.
I went to food fairs and farmers markets all around the country for years. I got listed in some Irish retailers and things just took off from there-shortly after Lily O’ Brien’s was fortunate to be listed and given a huge space in Selfridges in London and next stop was Waitrose and the airline industry…
Has the confectionery market of today changed much since you started?
Yes it’s changed a lot! People’s tastes and preferences have changed; they are constantly looking for more innovative and quality products. Customers are more educated in quality and value, so they are looking for the added incentive to buy a product-which is why we aim to create unique flavours.
Is a chocolate factory as fun as it sounds? Has anyone ever gone for a swim in a vat of chocolate, or anything crazy like that?
Yes it really is! We have regular tasting sessions for new flavours, its great fun to see what the R&D team come up with and taste the various flavour combinations.
There hasn’t been any swimming- but we do like to have fun and there are a few practical jokers in Lily’s. Last year the Technical Team made a batch of chocolates with chilli and jalapeño and gave them out to the unsuspecting staff in the canteen and watched as people fought their way to the water cooler.
We constantly try to have fun with chocolate and break boundaries- we have even made a 7ft x 5ft Easter egg made entirely of chocolate-it weighed more than 6 baby elephants.
Moving onto your senatorial work, how do you find balancing that and the chocolate business? What does being a senator entail?
Senator work is very enriching and I am very grateful for this unexpected job that has led me down so very many different paths.
I am very often lobbying on behalf of parents of sick children for better medical cards or for grants for very needy children’s charities. I am also very involved in the agriculture sector and food business.
The job can be very diverse, for example, yesterday I was working on a piece of employment legislation as well as the Competition and Consumer Protection Bill. I also had a meeting with The Irish Diary Board, the Irish Farmers Association and The Irish Horse Racing Authority.
I moved on then to a meeting with The Disability Federation of Ireland who have suffered many cuts to their organisations in recent weeks. The day finished with a meeting with a citizen who was representing 27 farming families who have a great problem with industrial pollution in their area but are not getting fair treatment from the Department of the Environment.
Do you find that different countries have different taste preferences? Do the Irish and the Brits prefer different kinds of chocolates? How about countries further afield? (I know you have customers all over the globe!)
Yes absolutely! It’s really interesting to see the different taste preferences of different cultures, what is a roaring success in one country may not do well in another.
Irish, British and Australians generally prefer milk chocolate, whereas Americans prefer Dark chocolate. Americans tend to also be more adventurous with their flavour combinations e.g. bacon & chocolate. We make a gorgeous Spiced Pumpkin for the US market which we are just launching.
Things that take off over there commonly arrive in Europe a few years later. We just tasted a batch of Green Tea Chocolates this morning, made with white chocolate; it may just be a winner for the Japanese or the health conscious market.
How do you stand out on such a competitive market, anyway?
In this industry you have to keep innovating or you will be left behind, we are always coming up with new flavour combinations. We are a great brand that has been built organically and anybody that buys one of our products is inclined to stay with us for life. It sounds a predictable thing to say but the product is that good, once it goes into your mouth the rest is history.
3 years ago we went into the desserts market which we make primarily for the airline industry. This took a lot of the seasonality of the chocolate market out making us more competitive.
Why’d you choose to name it after your daughter? Is she involved today?
I was a tired Mummy of a 2 year old little girl and was racking my brains for a good name for my new company and there she was sitting in front of me. It started as just “Lilys” for the first year that I was selling in farmer’s markets but eventually it evolved to Lily O’Brien’s. O’Brien is my maiden name.
What’s been your greatest/most memorable professional moment, so far?
I think it has to be securing space for Lily O’Brien’s chocolates in my first large retailer. I had started to gain brand recognition in farmers markets around the country and people were looking to buy my products in stores. This really showed me that this was a product that people really wanted to spend their money on which spurred me on to keep expanding.
Where do you get your ideas? How are recipes developed?
We have an R&D team that are dedicated to researching new market trends, tastes and preferences around the world. We are all food lovers and follow trends, chefs, and blogs. We also love healthy foods and are interested in working with our dark chocolate to take it in a healthy direction by blending it with super foods, nut and seeds.
We trial new flavours in the factory and we are constantly innovating exciting new chocolates. Packaging is a whole other side rather like the fashion industry; we are also searching for new shapes, textures, colours and beautiful ways to present our products to our customers.
We take influences from a lot of sources – even chefs as they make some amazing flavour combinations.
What’s your philosophy, summed up in a sentence?
Work hard and don’t stop listening and learning.
What advice would you give to aspiring food entrepreneurs who’d want the kind of results that you’ve had?
Get an experienced mentor or two if you can. Prepare to work like you have never imagined, immerse yourself completely and entirely in your field. Surround yourself by brilliant people who have strengths that you do not have.
If you weren’t doing what you do now, what would you be doing instead?
I would be training racehorses with my dogs at my heels.
If you could make a bespoke chocolate for anyone, living or dead, fictional or real, who would you choose and what would you make it from?
I would like Barack Obama to try our dark chocolate salted caramel, I know this is his favourite chocolate and I know for sure he would prefer ours above anything else he has ever tasted.
What’s your ultimate aim and goal for your business and your career? If you could achieve anything with it, what would you pick? Money and reality are no obstacle, so shoot for the moon…
I would like to see Lily O’Brien’s as the most successful premium chocolatier in England.
I’d also like to make enough money so that we could donate £1 million a year to children’s charities and vulnerable humans in need.
Where next for you and Lily O’Brien’s?
We very proud of our chocolate, people tasting Lily O’Brien’s for the first time really enjoy them, we frequently get emails from people from around the world who want to tell us how much they enjoy our chocolate-which is lovely to hear.
We are constantly looking to keep expanding and growing the business and brand awareness. We are increasing our presence in the UK at the moment which is very exciting… We want to reach millions more customers in England and hopefully turn them into lifelong raving fans.
And we always ask three customary ridiculous questions…
You have acquired a pet T-Rex and are morally obliged to look after it. It is 13 ft tall at the hips, eats half a ton of raw meat a day, and likes taking long walks. What would you call it and what would you do to keep it entertained and housed?
I would build a temperature controller giant 10,000 Square foot playroom for my new pet and take time to integrate my existing pets Arthur, (French bull dog) Pip (rescue Whippet) and Doodle the Poodle plus Kermit (1 eyed Chiauahua with the T-Rex and start to have some fun. I would have no security problems at home to worry about going forward and would be fairly fit from walking my T-Rex.
If the business was forced to change from chocolatier into a martial arts dojo, what style would you guys teach and what music would you play in your gym to get people fired up?
I would teach a cross between, Hot an Kundalini Yoga, Martial Arts and Salsa. My fired up song would be M People’s Search for the Hero Inside Yourself.
If the army donated a functioning army tank to Lily O’Brien’s (and paid it’s fuel /ammo expenses) what would you do with it?
I would brand it Lily O’Brien’s head to toe, hire George Clooney and drive all over England giving away chocolates, we would be famous in a very short time!!
