Siocolat: The Award-Winning Brand Reimagining Everyday Indulgence

Consumers are increasingly looking for products that offer more than sweetness alone. They want comforting flavours, convenient formats and ingredients that fit naturally into modern lifestyles. Founded by Olivia Ipsioco, Siocolat is responding with a growing collection of functional drinks and food products designed to make everyday indulgence feel more considered.

The British brand has been named Best Functional Beverage Brand 2026 at the Greater London Enterprise Awards, a recognition that highlights its imaginative approach to the rapidly evolving functional food and beverage market.

Rather than following familiar flavour trends, Siocolat combines the comfort of traditional drinks and desserts with vibrant ingredients such as cacao, ube, matcha and strawberry. Its range is largely centred on vegan recipes and products with no added sugar, offering customers a distinctive alternative to conventional sweetened drink mixes.

Recognition for a Different Kind of Beverage Brand

The Best Functional Beverage Brand 2026 award represents an important milestone for Siocolat. It recognises a brand that is developing products around flavour, convenience and more mindful formulation while creating a clear identity of its own.

For founder Olivia Ipsioco, Siocolat's philosophy is simple: reducing added sugar should not mean removing enjoyment. Its products are created to deliver colour, aroma, richness and a sense of occasion - qualities that can sometimes be missing from products positioned primarily around health-conscious choices.

This approach places the brand between several established categories. Siocolat is not simply a hot chocolate company, a supplement business or a traditional Filipino food producer. Its collection brings together elements of all three, creating products that can be enjoyed as comforting drinks, convenient snacks or additions to an everyday wellbeing routine.

The award also reflects the relevance of the brand’s wider mission. As more people consider sugar intake, plant-based choices and ingredient transparency, Siocolat is developing products that address those interests without losing sight of the emotional appeal of food and drink.

The Signature Hot Chocolate

At the heart of the collection is Siocolat’s Hot Chocolate, made with organic cacao and coconut milk and presented in convenient individual sachets.

Hot chocolate is closely associated with comfort, but many traditional mixes rely heavily on added sugar. Siocolat’s version is designed to provide a rich chocolate experience without added sugar, while coconut milk contributes a smooth and creamy character.

Each sachet contains approximately 70 calories and can be prepared easily at home, at work or while travelling. The individual portions also provide consistency and convenience, making the drink suitable for customers who want an occasional chocolate treat without buying a large tub.

It is a simple product, but one that captures the brand’s central idea: familiar indulgence can be reformulated without becoming unfamiliar.

Ube Latte: A Filipino Favourite Reimagined

One of Siocolat’s most distinctive products is its Ube Latte. Ube, a naturally purple yam widely used in Filipino desserts, has become increasingly visible internationally because of its striking colour and gently sweet, earthy flavour.

Siocolat’s latte introduces this much-loved Filipino ingredient in an accessible drink format. Coconut milk powder gives the drink creaminess, while the ube creates its recognisable purple appearance and characteristic flavour.

For customers familiar with Filipino food, the latte offers a contemporary interpretation of a nostalgic ingredient. For those discovering ube for the first time, it provides an easy introduction to a flavour that is still relatively unusual in the mainstream British beverage market.

The product demonstrates how Siocolat uses heritage as a source of innovation. Filipino flavours are not included simply for novelty; they are treated as ingredients with their own identity, history and potential to appeal to a much wider audience.

Strawberry Matcha With a Colourful Twist

The Strawberry Matcha Latte brings together two flavours that have built strong followings in modern café culture.

Matcha provides its distinctive green tea character, while strawberry introduces fruitiness and visual contrast. Coconut milk powder completes the blend, creating a convenient latte mix that may be prepared as either a warming drink or a refreshing cold beverage.

The result is colourful, contemporary and highly suited to customers who enjoy café-inspired drinks at home. It also reflects Siocolat’s ability to combine recognisable ingredients in less predictable ways.

Rather than producing another conventional matcha latte, the brand has created a drink with a more playful personality—one that appeals through taste, appearance and convenience.

Filipino-Inspired Rice Porridges

Siocolat’s innovation extends beyond lattes. Its Chocolate Rice Porridge, inspired by Filipino champorado, transforms a traditional comfort food into a convenient packaged product.

Champorado is a chocolate rice porridge traditionally enjoyed in the Philippines, often at breakfast or as a warming snack. Siocolat’s interpretation celebrates that cultural connection while presenting it in a format designed for contemporary kitchens.

The collection also includes Ube Rice Porridge, which combines comforting sticky rice with the distinctive colour and gently sweet, earthy character of Filipino purple yam. It offers another creative way to experience ube beyond the familiar cakes, ice creams and lattes associated with the ingredient.

Together, these rice porridges reinforce the brand’s broader identity. Siocolat is not attempting to replace traditional Filipino cooking; it is creating convenient new ways for familiar flavours and textures to be discovered and enjoyed.

Protein Drinks With More Personality

Protein products are often offered in a narrow selection of chocolate, vanilla or fruit flavours. Siocolat brings greater individuality to the category through products such as Ube Protein, Mellow Matcha Protein, and a premium hot chocolate protein drink.

The Ube Protein blend combines pea protein with ube and purple sweet potato, creating a plant-based option with an immediately recognisable colour and flavour profile. Mellow Matcha offers a tea-inspired alternative, while Café Mocha and hot chocolate varieties provide richer, more familiar choices.

By combining functional ingredients with flavours associated with cafés, desserts and Filipino cuisine, the range is intended to make protein drinks feel less routine and more enjoyable.

Clearer, More Considered Choices

A central feature of Siocolat’s range is its emphasis on products with no added sugar. This wording is important. “No added sugar” does not necessarily mean that a product contains no naturally occurring sugars; it means that sugars have not been added as an ingredient.

Siocolat aims to communicate this distinction responsibly rather than presenting its products as treatments or making exaggerated health promises. Customers with diabetes or other medical or dietary requirements should still review the full ingredient and nutritional information and make choices appropriate to their individual needs.

The brand’s focus is not deprivation. It is about giving consumers additional options—particularly those seeking vegan products, more unusual flavours or alternatives to heavily sweetened drink mixes.

Indulgence With a Wider Purpose

Siocolat’s outlook extends beyond its product range. The business supports the United Nations World Food Programme’s ShareTheMeal initiative, connecting purchases and brand growth with efforts to help provide meals to people facing hunger.

That wider vision also reflects Ipsioco's Filipino heritage and a desire to bring greater attention to the ingredients, communities and agricultural traditions behind the flavours. As interest in ube and other Southeast Asian ingredients continues to grow, Siocolat wants that visibility to be accompanied by respect for their cultural origins.

What Comes Next

Winning Best Functional Beverage Brand 2026 gives Siocolat a strong platform from which to expand its collection and reach new customers.

The brand occupies an increasingly relevant space in the market: products that are convenient but distinctive, indulgent but considered, and inspired by heritage without being limited by tradition.

From creamy organic-cacao hot chocolate and vivid ube lattes to strawberry matcha, Filipino-inspired porridge and plant-based protein blends, Siocolat is demonstrating how much creative potential exists beyond conventional sugary drinks.

Its award may recognise achievement in functional beverages, but the larger story is one of flavour-led innovation. Siocolat is creating products that invite people to discover something new while still enjoying the warmth, familiarity and pleasure that make a favourite drink or dessert memorable.

Sweet fusion, zero sugar is more than a tagline for the brand. It is a concise expression of Siocolat’s ambition: to unite cultures, flavours and more considered choices in products that still feel like a genuine treat.

Readers can learn more about Siocolat and its collection at siocolat.uk, and follow the brand on Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok.