Poppy’s Chocolate was born in 2005 from one simple frustration: it was far too hard to find truly great chocolate.

So I decided to make it.

Today, from our chocolate factory in Beenleigh, Queensland, our team creates handmade chocolates that are big on flavour, generous on fillings and designed to taste every bit as good as they look.

You won’t find Poppy’s in supermarkets. 

We make chocolate for people who want something more special. Bold flavours, unexpected creations, indulgent favourites and the kind of chocolate you might seriously consider hiding from your family.

And we don’t believe great chocolate should only be available to people who happen to live near a great chocolate shop.

We believe people everywhere in Australia should be able to experience really good chocolate, no matter where they live. That’s why we go to extraordinary lengths to send Poppy’s across Australia, including many places most other chocolate businesses simply won’t ship to, using express delivery and protective thermal packaging to help get it there safely.

But Poppy’s has always been about more than chocolate.

To me, chocolate is a physical representation of love. It can say I love you. I know you. I was thinking about you. You deserve something special.

And sometimes it simply says:

This one’s for me.

That is what sits at the heart of Poppy’s.

Making people feel special, one ridiculously good piece of chocolate at a time.

Chocolate started long before Poppy’s

My love of sweets started with my nan, Eve.

As a girl, I would stand beside her and make sweets and chocolates with her. She loved desserts as much as I did, and one philosophy of hers has stayed with me ever since:

Choose dessert first.

It was her way of enjoying the good things in life while they were there.

And, to be fair, it didn’t seem to do her any harm. Nan lived to 93 and only passed away after a fall, so I’d say choosing dessert first worked out pretty well for her.

That love of sweets never left me.

When I was about 17, my first boyfriend, Tony, worked out pretty quickly that the way to my heart was through chocolate.

For my birthday, he gave me an enormous basket filled with about 2kg of Guylian chocolate seashells.

I thought it was the greatest gift imaginable.

And I refused to share them with anyone.

That probably tells you quite a lot about me.

What stayed with me, though, was the feeling behind that gift. Someone had noticed exactly what made me happy and had gone completely overboard with it.

Long before Poppy’s existed, chocolate was already tied up with love, indulgence and feeling special for me.

I did eventually learn that really good chocolate should sometimes be shared.

Sometimes.

It all started with one simple question

“Where can I get some really good chocolate?”

In early 2005, I told my then-husband that if he ever wanted to do something romantic for me, he didn’t need flowers or grand gestures.

He could simply buy me some really good chocolates.

Then I realised he probably had absolutely no idea what I considered really good chocolate.

So naturally, I went looking myself.

And I was disappointed.

I searched the Gold Coast, then Brisbane and even further afield, looking for chocolates that were beautiful, indulgent and genuinely delicious.

There were chocolate shops, but I simply couldn’t find chocolates that met my standards.

I couldn’t believe it was that hard to find really good gourmet chocolate.

And somewhere along the way I stopped thinking:

“Where can I buy it?”

and started thinking:

“Why don’t I make it?”

A slightly crazy idea

I wasn’t completely new to business or food production. I had owned businesses before and had previously worked in production management for a major food manufacturer, so I understood production, systems, food and what it took to build something properly.

What I didn’t know was how to make chocolates for more than 2 people!

Minor detail.

But I had made chocolate with my nan as a teenager, I knew what I loved, and I knew exactly what I wanted the end result to be.

The mission became very simple:

Make exceptional chocolate that tastes every bit as good as it looks.

Around that time, a small Brisbane chocolate business that had been making chocolates for hotels and airlines since 1993 came onto the market.

I took one look at it and thought:

This is it.

We bought the business.

And then I started changing things.

First port of call: quality.

Then came creativity.

I wanted chocolates that looked incredible, colourful, exciting and different from what everyone else was doing.

But there was one rule I refused to compromise on:

They could look spectacular, but they had to taste even better.

We moved the business to Beenleigh, conveniently positioned between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, and Poppy’s began becoming the chocolate business I had imagined.

Then came the chocolate café

Six weeks after buying the chocolate business, I did something completely sensible.

I bought a café.

Actually, it was probably complete insanity.

But I had a grand vision.

We transformed it into our chocolate café, Choclicious.

People thought I was crazy.

Maybe I was.

But it gave me the opportunity to do something I absolutely loved:

Create.

Chocolate. Desserts. Sweets. New flavours. New ideas.

My grandmother had embedded such a love of sweets and desserts in me that narrowing down what we should make was probably harder than coming up with ideas in the first place.

I was suddenly doing something that allowed me to be creative while using all of my business and production experience at the same time.

And, if I’m being accurate, experiencing the thrill of frequently having absolutely no idea what I was doing next.

After six years, and the Global Financial Crisis, we made the decision to sell our two Choclicious cafés and concentrate on our growing wholesale chocolate business and factory.

But there was one part of retail I really missed.

Watching people eat the chocolate.

There is something very different about making a product and actually seeing someone’s face when they taste it.

So when the opportunity came to expand our Beenleigh factory into the adjoining premises in 2011, I quickly decided we would also open the factory to the public.

And we have been welcoming chocolate lovers through the doors ever since.

Chocolate through the difficult bits too

Not long after that expansion, my marriage ended.

Suddenly I was running a growing chocolate making business while raising three young children largely on my own.

There were periods when it was incredibly difficult.

But those years also helped shape what Poppy’s means to me.

One customer in particular has stayed in my mind for years.

He was a dad with five children, each living with disability or autism. He had come into the shop on his own for a little break and looked absolutely exhausted.

He bought some chocolates and decided to indulge in one of our Red Heart gourmet chocolates while he was still standing at the counter.

He closed his eyes.

His face relaxed.

And then he smiled.

For just a few minutes, everything seemed to disappear.

I remember looking at him and thinking:

That is what chocolate can do.

Of course chocolate doesn’t fix life’s problems.

But sometimes it can give someone a few minutes of genuine pleasure in the middle of an otherwise difficult day.

A little moment of joy.

That moment has never been far from my mind.

Made of Love

I have always believed chocolate is more than something sweet to eat.

Chocolate is one of the ways we say:

I love you.

Thank you.

I was thinking about you.

Congratulations.

I’m sorry.

You deserve this.

You’ve got this.

And sometimes:

I bought this entirely for myself and I am absolutely not sharing it.

To me, chocolate is a physical representation of love.

It is food with soul.

And that belief sits at the heart of Poppy’s.

Made of Love. Worth Hiding.

In 2016, Robina Town Centre spent more than six months trying to convince us to open a chocolate shop there.

Eventually, I gave in.

We loved being back in a busy retail environment and built an incredible community of regular customers.

After six years at Robina, we made the difficult decision not to renew the lease and closed the store in early 2023.

We still miss our regulars, and love it when they come and visit us at Beenleigh.

But while all of that was happening, another part of Poppy’s had begun growing.

On 30 November 2019, we launched our online store.

And that changed what was possible.

Until then, enjoying Poppy’s often meant being able to physically get to us.

Suddenly, we could take the chocolates we were making in Beenleigh and send them to chocolate lovers all over Australia.

That matters to me.

Because if you live in regional Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory or somewhere hundreds of kilometres from the nearest specialist chocolate shop, why should you miss out on the good stuff?

You shouldn’t.

We know shipping chocolate around Australia isn’t always easy.

It gets hot.

Australia is enormous.

Some destinations take longer to reach.

And there are places many chocolate businesses simply choose not to send to.

We would rather work out how we can get it to you.

That is why we use express delivery, thermal packaging and temperature-conscious dispatching, and why we put so much thought into how and when orders leave our factory. 

We even created our OWN app so all of the team can check the weather WHERE YOU LIVE and what journey it has to take. 

We want chocolate lovers everywhere in Australia to be able to experience Poppy’s.

Not supermarket chocolate.

Not something mass-produced months ago.

The chocolates we make here.

Still creating

Poppy’s has changed enormously since 2005.

Our range has grown.

Our factory has grown.

Our team has grown.

My three children have certainly grown.

And one of my favourite parts of this business is still creating something new and wondering:

“What if we tried this?”

Sometimes that becomes a new favourite.

Sometimes it becomes something nobody should ever speak of again.

That is part of the fun.

We want Poppy’s to be somewhere you keep discovering something new. Filled chocolate Bliss Blocks, Chocolate Pies, Rocky Road, gourmet chocolates, limited creations, flavours you weren’t expecting and things you probably won’t find anywhere else.

Because chocolate should be fun.

It should be exciting.

And every now and then it should be a little bit ridiculous.

But the reason we do it hasn’t changed

We want to make people feel special.

Whether you’re sending someone a gift, celebrating something enormous, cheering somebody up, saying thank you, remembering someone, spoiling your family, or simply opening a box because Tuesday was a lot, we want that first bite to give you a little moment of joy.

Poppy’s is still made by real people here in Beenleigh.

Our chocolatiers, production team, packers, customer service team and everyone working behind the scenes care enormously about what leaves this factory.

I may have started Poppy’s, but I could never do it without them.

And none of us could do it without the people who keep choosing Poppy’s.

If you have read this far, I suspect you’re probably one of our kind.

A proper chocolate person.

Someone who understands that when chocolate is really, really good, it isn’t just chocolate.

So welcome.

You’ve found your chocolate people.

And remember Nan Eve’s rule:

Choose dessert first.

With love, passion and a slightly unreasonable amount of chocolate,

Lynda Pedder (Poppy)
Founder & Managing Director
and Team Poppy’s

1. Why is it called Poppy’s Chocolate?

Poppy is my nickname.

My mum used to call me Lollipop, which gradually became Lolly, Pop and eventually Poppy.

Considering I have loved sweets for as long as I can remember, it seems rather fitting that I ended up with both the nickname Poppy and a chocolate business carrying the same name.

2. Do you still eat chocolate?

Absolutely.

Every day.

A day without chocolate is a day without sunshine.

3. Why aren’t you fat?

Yes, people really do ask me this all the time.

I eat chocolate every day, and I genuinely believe good chocolate can be part of a good life. I grew up with my nan’s philosophy of “Choose dessert first”, and considering she lived to 93, I’d say it wasn’t a bad way to live.

For me, chocolate isn’t something to feel guilty about. It’s something to enjoy.

And if you’re going to eat chocolate, make it really good chocolate.

4. Why don’t you sell in supermarkets?

Because that isn’t what I want Poppy’s to be.

We want to keep creating interesting chocolates, make them properly, and send them directly to the people who love them rather than making everything fit a supermarket shelf.

Poppy’s is about handmade chocolate, bold flavours, generous fillings, new creations and a little bit of fun.

5. How do you send chocolate all over Australia without it melting?

Very carefully.

We use express delivery, thermal packaging, ice packs when needed and temperature-conscious dispatching. We also hold orders when conditions are simply too hot to send them safely.

We go to a lot of effort because we want chocolate lovers all over Australia, including places many other chocolate businesses won’t ship to, to be able to enjoy Poppy’s.