Anyone visiting a major high street or shopping centre is likely to be familiar with Hotel Chocolat, the upscale purveyor of chocolates where the store environment is almost as important as the product itself.
It is unlikely, however, that the vast majority of the retailer’s customers will have come across this store, which is in the heart of the air-side part of Luton Airport and is Hotel Chocolat’s first venture into selling from this kind of arena.
And the manner in which this is done is surprising on two levels. Eschewing one of the units that line the perimeter of the airport’s departures area, Hotel Chocolat has opted instead to trade from a mid-floor position. In doing so, it has rather more in common with the Starbucks area at the other end of the floor and is rather better positioned than the coffee seller, insofar as it is impossible to head for the departure gates without passing the store.
It has also avoided any kind of airport-slick softening of the edges, using instead old timber, hand-chalked blackboards and cabinets that are absolutely in keeping with its current high street avatars. A passing nod is made in the direction of in-store technology with a monitor displaying images of the retailer’s cocoa plantation in Saint Lucia, which has been embedded into a tall display unit clad in the repurposed wood, but, for the most part, this is about an almost anti-airport retail stance, ensuring it stands out from the herd.
The initial reaction to Hotel Chocolat’s decision to locate its first airport store in Luton is that it is a curious move, but according to chief executive and founder Angus Thirlwell, it’s a bit like New York in that ‘if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere’. The store opened in May.
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