Melba’s Chocolate Room
Prior to restoration, our Chocolate Room was a cheese storage room for the Wagon Wheel Cheddars. Large wooden racks were mounted on walls to take the weight of the cheese.
Fast-forward to today, this room is home to our vertical packing machine where we pack a large majority of our products. This machine heat seals, and prints the nutritional information and ingredients on all our small bags.
Although this room is home to our packing machine, we also use the two metre-long steel tables to make our famous Rocky Road and a variety of our Slabs. Using traditional recipes and techniques, we combine cherries, peanuts and marshmallows along with either milk, white or dark chocolate, mixing it by hand, to create that delicious Rocky Road you see on our shelves. Our slabs are also crafted here, from almond and peanut, to our recent addition, Cookies & Cream; the Chocolate Room is where the magic happens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hYhXxfi874
Besides chocolate fun, this room is home to a 1958 Forgrove 22B Twist wrapper, previously used to wrap our Traffic Light lollies. This twist wrapper is entirely mechanical, having no electronic parts. The Forgrove 22B was one of the first Forgrove machines to be put back into production immediately after World War II. Although we don’t use this twist wrapper in today’s production, it sits proudly in our Chocolate Room as an appreciation for good old craftsmanship and the commitment Melba’s has to keeping traditions alive.
The Melba’s team invite you to visit the factory and wander through, discovering the old-Australian favourites. Our team encourage all tourists to ask questions, try samples and rediscover old-favourites.
