Hotel Chocolat has opened a new “immersive” café concept store format in Manchester.
The new two-storey, Velvestiser Café – which will inform its future openings – opened on Cross Street earlier this year.
As well as being the chain’s largest café to date, with 70 covers, the brand said it aimed to celebrate Hotel Chocolat’s “pioneering approach to ethical cacao”.
Shoppers will be taken on a “multisensory journey” through the entire “cocoa journey”. A “cacao cam” offers a “live style” feed to its company-owned farm in Saint Lucia. An ‘agroforestry wall’ has been installed along the back of the café to play up the brand’s biodiversity credentials.
More practically, the store is also the first in the UK to feature a new “create your own box” fixture, which allows shoppers to curate their own personalised box of Velvetiser drinking chocolate flavours.
The channel – underpinned by Hotel Chocolat’s Velvestiser machine – has become a major focus of Hotel Chocolat’s strategy, particularly as a way to drive repeat purchases and subscriptions all year round. Hospitality sales at its UK Velvetiser cafés were up 33% year on year.
It’s also the first to bring the full 100-strong range of Hotel Chocolat’s Velvetiser drinking chocolate into one store fixture, in the form of an extended theatrical Wall of Chocolate. To help product discovery, interactive digital screens allow shoppers to take part in a ‘Love Match Quiz’ to find their favourite flavour.
Renewed expansion plan
The new store is the flagship of a renewed UK and international expansion plan, under owner Mars, which acquired the luxury chocolatier for £534m in 2023.
Hotel Chocolat CEO Lysa Hardy plans around 25 new UK stores this year, and has invested £10m to boost capacity at its manufacturing plant in Royston.
Mars is also taking another crack at the US, where Hotel Chocolat’s previous efforts stalled in 2022, resulting in the closure of all stores.
Co-founder and chairman Angus Thirlwell – who was replaced by Hardy as CEO following the acquisition – flew to Chicago in March to open the first of an initial two stores.
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