Comment: Creating a new model for the chocolate business

Guess who invented the Easter egg? And the chocolate bar? The British, during the last glory years for British chocolate, the late 1880s to the early 1900s.

Respected for creativity and leveraging the manufacturing prowess from the industrial revolution, our early chocolate brands blazed a trail that led the world.

Fast forward to the late 1900s - the effect of two world wars, takeovers and an unfortunate tendency to dial up the sugar content over cocoa, caused a reputational low point: the proposed renaming of some British chocolate (not ours) to ‘Vegelate’ by the EU.

That’s certainly not the view now. Britain is at the forefront of the highly competitive super premium chocolate market, with the Belgians, French and Swiss appearing to be behind the beat.

Powering this renaissance has been a relentless focus on authenticity and creativity. At Hotel Chocolat, we were the first to present ‘single côte’ chocolate, developed in much the same way a fine wine is - from a single grove of trees on our plantation, meaning no harvest will taste the same as another.

‘Cocoa nerdy’ certainly, but only as much as top wine Cru. “The most exclusive chocolate in the world,” according to The Telegraph and a strong message of intent to our foreign competitors.

Alongside this, we have worked hard to bring design and humour into the market. How would you like your eggs this Easter? Scrambled Eggs, Ostrich Eggs, Egg Sandwiches, Quails Eggs, or perhaps Egg on Your Face?

“Britain is at the forefront of the highly competitive super premium chocolate market”

Angus Thirlwell, Hoel Chocolat

One in three households now have a dietary requirement and over the past six months we’ve been at the forefront of nutritional innovation.

We created ‘Supermilk’ - 65% of pure cocoa, a splash of milk and less sugar than a dark chocolate bar. A truly premium milk chocolate with the all-important creamy cocoa hit, just dragging much less sugar up with it. A bit like having a great flat white and passing on the sugar. This Easter, we’ve introduced ‘Milk-Free Milk’, a creamy non-dairy chocolate, made with almond milk.

Casting a sustainable new model for luxury chocolate in the digital age goes beyond this, though. The London diarist Samuel Pepys wrote in 1661 that he was popping out to meet a friend over a cup of drinking chocolate.

Long before solid chocolate was invented, this was the way we enjoyed it - as a drink, in company. In Georgian times, London teemed with decadent ‘chocolate houses’, powering the upper classes with luxuriantly thick steaming cups of hot chocolate.

We are investing strongly behind this wider emotional-social pull with our Cocoa cafes and restaurants, as well as our plantation hotel in Saint Lucia. Digital linkages move them up
a notch from the chocolate parlours of the 17th century, but they remain warm and inviting spaces to relax, refuel, shop and socialise.

So the renaissance gathers pace and, with it, opportunities to bring a new model of chocolate luxury to London and beyond.

Angus Thirlwell is chief executive and co-founder of Hotel Chocolat.