She Chose Jamaica Over Her Birthplace (Here's Why)

What happens when a diplomat's wife lands in Jamaica with a toddler, three towels, and no plan—discovers she can't find a single pastry she likes, teaches herself French patisserie in three condensed weeks in Montreal, starts a catering business out of sheer boredom, gets approached by the owner of Café Blue to transform Jamaican cocoa into world class chocolate, spends three years learning to identify perfectly fermented beans, launches her first product with blue mountain coffee beans covered in dark chocolate, accidentally creates her signature colorful splash design when chocolate drips on a mold, names her brand Likkle More after her favorite Jamaican expression despite being from Ivory Coast, commutes between Haiti and Jamaica every two weeks for five years to keep her business alive, builds a factory with a team she trained from scratch, exports her bean to bar chocolate globally while attending international trade shows, realizes she feels more at home in laid back Jamaica than in the intensity of Abidjan, and admits that driving in Ivory Coast is infinitely more stressful than anything Kingston traffic could throw at her? In this warm, surprising, and deeply inspiring episode, host April Jackson sits down with Nudin—a trained dietitian turned French pastry chef turned award winning chocolatier, founder of Likkle More Chocolate, a bean to bar chocolate brand that captures the vibrant spirit of Jamaica through bold flavors, striking hand painted designs, and the finest locally sourced cocoa—who moved to Kingston in 2010 as a diplomatic spouse, fell in love with the island's relaxed pace and friendly people, and built a thriving artisan chocolate company that represents Jamaica on the global stage with sophistication, authenticity, and a little bit of European flair. From landing at night in downtown Kingston with her husband and baby son only to discover their rental apartment had no towels or bedding, to taking taxis everywhere for three months and learning every shortcut in the city, to enrolling her son in an American school system when she expected French education, to baking out of boredom because she couldn't find quality pastries in local coffee shops, to convincing a pastry instructor in Montreal to condense a six week course into three weeks so she wouldn't be away from her toddler, to launching a catering business that spread purely by word of mouth, to meeting the owner of Café Blue who asked if she'd ever considered working with Jamaican cocoa, to spending a year researching before saying yes, to learning how to identify well fermented beans and roast them to perfection, to creating the first product—blue mountain coffee beans covered in dark chocolate—to accidentally inventing the signature colorful splash when chocolate dripped onto a bar mold and she thought it looked too cool to waste, to choosing the name Likkle More because it was her favorite Jamaican expression and she wanted to make patois elegant, to being told by a branding company to change the name and refusing, to moving to Haiti for five years and commuting back to Jamaica every two to three weeks to keep the business running, to training a team so well that she can now develop new products remotely, to attending global trade shows through the International Trade Centre and securing export deals, to dreaming of opening a physical store one day, to realizing her son feels more Jamaican than anything else and wants to return after university, to admitting that her Belgian husband likes Jamaica but doesn't love it the way she does, to comparing traffic in Abidjan to Kingston. Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: From Ivory Coast to Jamaica via Diplomacy 00:02:09 First Impressions: Landing in Kingston with No Plan 00:03:46 Settling In: School, Shortcuts, and Finding Home 00:07:04 Baking Out of Boredom: The Birth of a Passion 00:10:14 From Home Baker to Catering Business 00:11:25 The Chocolate Opportunity: Meeting Café Blue 00:12:48 Learning the Craft: From Bean to Bar 00:14:03 The First Product: Blue Mountain Coffee Beans Covered in Chocolate 00:16:29 Creating Likkle More: A Brand Born from Patois 00:20:18 The Signature Splash: An Accidental Innovation 00:22:38 Balancing Two Countries: The Haiti Years 00:24:09 Growing the Business: Export, ITC, and Global Shows 00:25:04 The Dream: A Physical Store and Global Reach 00:26:46 Jamaica vs Ivory Coast: Traffic, Food, and Finding Home 00:32:19 Quick Fire Round: Tasty Patty, Sorrel, and No Rum #HowDidYouGetHere #AprilJackson #JamaicaLiving #IvoryCoast #BeanToBarChocolate #LikkleMore #ChocolateMaker #CaféBlue #BlueMountainCoffee #JamaicaCocoa #FrenchPastry #Entrepreneurship #DiplomaticLife #ExpatLife #ChocolateBusiness #ArtisanChocolate #CaribbeanBusiness #FoodEntrepreneur #WomenInBusiness #JamaicanPatois #InternationalTrade #HaitiToJamaica #ChocolateFactory #CulturalFusion #AfricanInJamaica #StartingOver #PassionToBusiness #GlobalExport