34 35#studentfarmer

During his time in restaurant kitchens, Liam learned a lot about the amazing produce being grown in his local area.

“We are surrounded by amazing producers here – the honey man, Wendy up the road who makes marmalade on her farm, and many more,” he said. But Liam didn't want to work for other people.

He took a year off to be a teenager and realised that there weren’t any opportunities for young people in the area, unless he did something himself.

“I told myself I was going to set up a chocolate factory and change the world, using all this amazing produce.” He taught himself how to make chocolate from inside a caravan and secured £3,000 from this story’s Willy Wonka: Prince Charles.

f you’d asked me what I thought the NomNom chocolate factory would look like before I got there, I would

have guessed that it would be full of big silver vats and people wearing hairnets. I probably wouldn’t have said that I’d be greeted by the sound of ‘It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll (But I Like It)' blaring from the speakers.

NomNom is a modern-day Charlie and the Chocolate Factory story – but with a dash of anarchy and a drop of rebellion. Liam Burgess, the brains behind the brand, is only 22 but in his short time on the planet he’s already set up another chocolate business (that he ran under his stairs at the age of seven), been fired from a couple of jobs, been head chef in a restaurant at the age of 16, and become a recognised and respected entrepreneur. Charlie Bucket, step aside – it’s someone

Or, more accurately, The Prince’s Trust. The rest is history: today NomNom

has taken over Farmer Phil’s abandoned cowshed and from it they produce 1,000 bars a day.

What started in a caravan is now a brilliantly successful business that helps support local producers and employs creative and talented young people. And those local producers and brilliant young people make chocolate that is incredibly popular and delicious.

“We wanted to produce chocolate bars because they’re nostalgic," Liam explained.

The flavours change from month-to-month depending on what is in season: “When there is rhubarb, we make a rhubarb chocolate bar,” Liam said.

“When Ros has got her raspberries (you couldn't make it up) we make vodka and raspberry bars, and when blueberries are in season we use those.

“It makes it exciting. For instance, Wendy Brandon up the road (who makes our marmalade) has a wild plum tree, so once a year we buy all her plums. There aren’t many, so we can only make about 1,000 bars of it.”

But this tactic works brilliantly – last year’s plum chocolate crop sold out practically immediately.

Hopefully the constant, terribly unsubtle references to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory will have given you a few hints about what Liam has

PUREIMAGINATION

Ielse’s turn in the factory. But where does farming come into this? The building we’re stood in, for a start.

When he was growing up in the Welsh village of Llanboidy in Carmarthenshire, Liam lived just down the road from Farmer Phil, who he would help out in return for chocolate biscuits. The area is seeped in farming history – the dairy industry has left an imprint on the countryside, despite the fact that most of it has moved on.

“What I’m trying to do here, in the middle of nowhere, is create a company that’s capable of providing a reason for all the young people to stick around; the sons and daughters of farmers whose milk industry has collapsed,” Liam explained.

“I wanted to create a company full of young people, run by young people, that is creative, making great, quality products in the middle of nowhere, on a farm. And I want to replicate this model on other farms.”

Fighting talk indeed. It becomes apparent pretty quickly that NomNom is about so much more than chocolate. But the chocolate is a pretty good place to start.

“For some of my childhood I grew up next to the Cadbury factory in Bournville,” Liam said. “My grandad used to take me to the Cadbury staff shop – he’d give me £50 when I was seven-years-old to buy stock for my shop, which I ran from my ‘chocolate factory’ under the stairs at home. Mum used to take me round all her friends’ offices and people would buy from me because I charged 30p for a Dairy Milk when they were 35p in a shop.”

School wasn’t really his bag so he ended up working in restaurant kitchens. But not just any kitchens – he worked alongside French restaurant owner and chef Ludovic Dieumegard, before leaving to be head chef at a local gastropub when he was just 16.

in store for the future. “The book captured so many peoples’

imagination but it’s not real. Why?” said Liam. Why indeed. Well, the dream may not be resigned to the pages of Roald Dahl’s book for much longer.

Farmer Phil’s old cow barn happens to be pretty close to the former site of Pemberton’s Chocolate Farm.

“It was the only chocolate factory on a farm in Britain, but it has been empty since it was abandoned three years ago,” Liam said. “We will take over the site later this year.”

And this is where Liam’s imagination really comes into play. He aims to build a real-life Charlie and the Chocolate Factory chocolate river. Yes, Dahl fans, you read that right. Feel free to take a break if you need to squeal and sing ‘I’ve got a golden ticket’ at the top of your lungs.

But that’s not all. Liam is keen to move into making smaller bars of chocolate, as well as the bigger bars they currently produce in Farmer Phil’s cowshed.

“The biggest innovation in chocolate was around 60 years ago, and nothing has really changed since then,” he explained.

“I’ve always wanted to make individual chocolate bars, but I will reinvent them.”

But don’t worry, NomNom have no plans to leave their farming roots and Farmer Phil behind. They’ll continue making their current bars at the existing site. It just wouldn't taste the same or be as wonky if it wasn’t made on the now-infamously uneven cowshed floor.

April 2016

Willy Wonka might be a figment of our imagination,

but we think we've found someone who'll give him a run

for his money. Emily Scaife finds out more.