Hi, my name is Catherine, the owner of Coca Loca (along with my husband Chris). My keto/low-carb (LC) journey started over in 2017, when I was at my heaviest weight ever (including my three pregnancies) and I had been diagnosed as pre-diabetic, which I managed to reverse after losing weight through fasting, following a keto diet and exercise. About six months later Chris joined me in what was to be our new lifestyle. We had to adapt how and what we ate, which was very challenging when living in the centre of Bangkok on a street filled with amazing restaurants and street food!
With a bit of will–power and ‘re-education’, we mostly conquered our sugar and carb addictions and changed our lives for the better, feeling healthier than we had for many years. Through that journey, we’ve come to understand what the old adage ‘food is medicine’ means. The food we eat plays a huge role in our physical and mental health and feel I am now awake to how the food we eat can impact our health and wellbeing.
I have always enjoyed cooking and baking especially for family and friends (I got that from my mum). I like to cook from scratch but have always struggled to follow a recipe and always had to add my own twist to it. I also enjoy playing around with my own recipes. So while trying to kick my sugar addiction, I started developing my own low-carb/sugar-free sweet slices and treats. I was making everything from scratch except for the shop bought chocolate I was using. It just didn’t feel right. I knew the origin of all my ingredients - except for the chocolate. This lead me down the rabbit hole of Bean-to-Bar (B2B) chocolate making, and I became a little bit obsessed.
And so, Coca Loca was realised from three things; firstly, it was to provide a healthier home-made alternative to the highly processed/Low-carb foods on the supermarket shelves. Secondly, it was because we believe it is important to know what's in the food I am eating and where our food comes from, and for us, this means where possible buying local (Australian), using Australian ingredients, and using natural ingredients that are free from artificial flavours, preservatives and fake ‘foods’. Finally, Coca Loca was born from a new appreciation for B2B craft chocolate - and the need for it to be ethical and sugar-free.
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As mentioned on the home page, the Coca Loca name is a play on words - COCA is pretty simple, it’s short for Coffee and Cacoa but LOCA has a few meanings. Firstly, it is short for Low-Carb (our way of eating), it’s short for Love Cacao, which we do, but it's also a South American (Spanish) word for 'crazy’, which we are for Coffee, Chocolate and the low-carb lifestyle.
We are a small-batch, micro-business based in the foothills of Perth, WA, and as the name suggests, we roast coffee, make B2B sugar-free chocolate and a variety of other low-carb baked products. We are very proud of the fact we roast Australian grown coffee and use 100% Australian grown nuts and seeds and that we use ethically sourced coffee and cacao beans.
Our products are all free of sugar, grain, lupins dairy*, eggs*, soy and seed oils (otherwise known as vegetable oils), so if you are living a keto/low-carb lifestyle like us, or you have diabetes (or another metabolic diseases), or you just want to know what is in your food and where it comes from, give our products a go.
I really hope you enjoy the range of products we currently have available on-line. You'll find more when you visit us at our market stalls and on the Coca Loca shelves in The Micro Collective (TMC), Kalamunda, like our B2B chocolate+, cookies and roasted Australian coffee+.
Cheers
Catherine (& Chris) :)
*While all products do not contain eggs or dairy, this
could change as recipes are developed in the future.
+ Our chocolates and coffee are not available in our online shop, but you can sometimes find them at TMC or our market stalls :)
