Hotel Chocolat is to launch its Velvetiser hot chocolate into Tesco for the first time.
From 27 October, an “edited” range of five flavours of the chocolate flakes will launch into 147 Tesco Extra stores.
Priced at £7.95, the five-portion top-up packs would provide owners of the chain’s Velvetiser hot chocolate machine the convenience of being able to “repeat buy” their hot chocolate alongside their weekly shop.
“This is a big move by Hotel Chocolat to meet our customers where they are,” Hotel Chocolat founder and global CEO Angus Thirlwell told The Grocer, adding that customers had been asking the brand to make its drinking chocolate – which is currently only available in its stores and online – “more widely available”.
“We have quite a limited distribution to our own stores and customers would like to be able to repeat buy their drinking chocolate in a more convenient way, where they prioritise convenience and value over brand immersion,” Thirlwell said.
The five variants are: Classic 70%, Milky, Salted Caramel, Vanilla White and Black Forest. They’ll be stocked in dedicated bays in the hot beverages aisle, marked by branded Hotel Chocolat shelf fins and mast heads.
The six month pilot marks the brand’s second major entry onto supermarket shelves, following the short-lived launch of branded bays into Waitrose in 2021. The brand’s only other current supermarket presence is its boozy chocolate cream liquor and a smaller gifting pack, which is stocked by Tesco and Waitrose.
Growing demand for hot chocolate globally
The move is the latest expansion of the high street chain under now-owner Mars, which acquired Hotel Chocolat for £538m in November 2023.
Thirlwell spoke to The Grocer while visiting the UK from Chicago, where he is currently leading the chain’s third major attempt to expand to the US. Alongside its three new US stores, the chain also plans to have opened 25 new sites in the UK by the end of this year.
Rather than discouraging shoppers from visiting Hotel Chocolat’s own stores and cafés, having a larger presence in “one of the most shopped environments in the UK” would “pique the interest” of more shoppers to visit, Thirlwell said.
“Our store model is the most immersive experience you can have,” he said. “The relevance of any of those locations is if anything strengthened.”
Its stores remained the only place shoppers could access all 30 Velvetiser lines and remained central to its core gifting missions, he said.
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Since patenting and launching the Velvetiser as a bit of an experiment in 2018, the machine – and subscription service – has become a core element of the Hotel Chocolat business, alongside its heritage of gifting and occasions and is seen as key to its global growth.
There are currently 1.5 million Velvetiser owners in the UK, Thirlwell said.
Despite cocoa prices surging over the past 20 months, Hotel Chocolat’s own internal figures showed there remained a growing and largely untapped demand for the hot chocolate market. The retailer installed a second manufacturing line at its factory in Huntington, Cambridgeshire, to support further growth globally, Thirlwell said.
“We’ve created this market, we’ve been building it with real credibility and we know that we’ve got the widest and best product range, so highly exciting moves basically.”
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