Angus Thirlwell: “If you want a sustainable, profitable business, get a bit of brand WOW!’’

The very first Hotel Chocolat shop opened its doors to guests in North London in 2004. It was the start of a pioneering revolution in British chocolate.

Since that Watford shop opened ten years ago, another 75 Hotel Chocolat boutiques have opened in the UK.

Hotel Chocolat is the creation of British entrepreneurs Angus Thirlwell and Peter Harris. Everything they do is guided by three basic values, and always will be:

1. Originality: Being fresh, creative and innovative, and always one surprising step ahead.
2. Authenticity: Keeping it real. Growing their own cocoa beans on their beautiful plantation in St. Lucia, creating their own chocolate recipes and even making chocolate fresh from the bean in their cocoa bar-cafes.
3. Ethics: Reconnecting their love of chocolate with its roots. They believe that cocoa farmers worldwide deserve respect and a fair deal. And that’s what they strive to offer, from Saint Lucia to Ghana where they pay their growers above market value to give a fair deal all round.

In the following interview, I met Angus Thirlwell at Rabot 1745, a relatively new addition to the Hotel Chocolat family, bringing the cocoa-inspired cuisine of the flagship Hotel Chocolat Hotel in St. Lucia to the UK.

Named after the company’s cocoa plantation in St. Lucia, Rabot 1745 has the feel of a plantation house transported into the heart of London’s vibrant Borough Market.

Hi Angus. Many thanks indeed for being part of this special book to share the learning of successful founding entrepreneurs with those earlier on in their entrepreneurial journey. So, where did your business learning begin?

I went on the Cranfield Business Growth Programme and I can remember a time when the business felt like it was on the cusp of something and I didn’t want us to mess it up. We had made a few mistakes, but we were at the point where the chocolate tasting club (our monthly subscription scheme) was really about to take off and I had a sense that I had to make sure that I was as well-equipped as I possibly could be to lead us to the next level.

The big thing that I got out of the business growth programme is that I shouldn’t feel bad about not being busy all the time. It’s better to be thinking, planning and strategising about what’s around the corner, rather than just going home every day exhausted in a blood and guts role, feeling that unless I’m in the middle of everything I’m not worthy of being the leader of the business.

So, that learning to get out of the doing has really helped me get to where I am now and I appreciate that some people want to feel that people are dependent upon them, be the one with all the answers and the hero in the middle of the business. I also see that sometimes with new employees, where people don’t want to allow anybody else to be developing, they want to be at the centre of it and have everybody else dependent upon them. It’s not sustainable and is driven by insecurity and, ultimately, is selfish because they’re not putting the needs of the business before their own.

So, I think that was a really important lesson for me to learn. It had a very positive impact on the growth of the business. Whether I would have got there myself without going on the business growth programme, I don’t know. I think I probably would have, but it might have taken longer and with more mistakes.

Sometimes I describe it to business owners as continually making yourself redundant from the things that you are ‘doing’ now in order to let others move up and take them on. The business growth comes from you moving further and further into leading and out of doing.

Yes, and in our business there is a slightly different dynamic because I still own the business 50/50 with my business partner and we still work actively within the business. However, our relationship has changed in terms of executive responsibilities over that time.

When we first started out I was joint managing director with Peter Harris, my business partner, and I was very happy about that. He is about eight years older than I am and already had a couple of business start-ups under his belt. I just knew that I didn’t want to be junior to him and our relationship wasn’t like that.

But over time it changed further and I wanted to be the leader in terms of executive responsibilities. I was very happy to have Peter as a shareholder on equal status with me, but in terms of leading the business and driving the brand forward I had to be the one. So, we managed to do that without falling out, which is good, but part of the benefit of the business programme that I completed was also to seek confidence in my own strategic ideas.

Many put off conversations like that, for fear of rocking the boat. How did you approach that initial discussion with Peter?

Respectfully and separating the issues and the opportunities of shareholding and ownership from those of executive responsibilities or directorship. I think that provides you with a fantastic structure for this type of conversation. Saying that I don’t want to change anything on a shareholder level, we want the business to go from here to here, my thoughts are that we should do it this way and then having a good discussion about it. We agreed that we would try it for a while and see how it went, and it worked very well so we kept it that way.

So, on the one hand we have management capability, the logical, rational, process and structural side of business, and on the other, leadership capability – being a visionary, building a strong sustainable brand and culture – the behavioural side of the business, inspiring people to get on board. And understanding that the business needs both to really thrive.

What’s been your biggest personal learning on the leadership side of that journey?

Trying to search for the simplest thing all the time. Subtle messages don’t work very well. Subtle messages are OK when you’ve got a very tight group of people who are fellow addicts of the business with the same view as you have. Taking it outside of that group is hard; you end up with different interpretations. So, simplicity is the key: working at that message, keep refining it down and then go back and refining it again. Whenever I’ve forced myself to do that, I’ve never regretted it. Yet, whenever I’ve gone too quickly out of the starting gates with something and got very excited about it, trying to tell people without refining it in my own mind and in my own communication, it’s ultimately been frustrating because they don’t get it quickly enough and they don’t understand it, so we go around again. So, that’s one of the biggest things around my learning.

That’s really pertinent as I work a lot with growing businesses around distilling their brand and the values that make them unique into a few simple statements. I noticed that yours were distilled into three clear statements and I love the fact that there are only three. It’s nice and easy to remember, but all-pervasive too.

Three always works, doesn’t it? Whenever I do speeches, it’s always three. I can only remember three things at a time. Since then I’ve read lots of books and come back to three’s a great number to base any strategy around and then you can break each one up into smaller parts of course.

How has that simplicity of message been key in your business journey?

Our business history is really 25 years. So, I started with this 25 years ago and we evolved gradually into Hotel Chocolat. We divide our business history into 15 years of apprenticeship, lots of knockbacks and trying to build lots of different models. Some worked quite quickly, other ones it took me ten years to get to work, like our internet chocolate business.

You were a very early adopter of selling online.

I should’ve probably given up before I did!

The problem with selling chocolate by internet or mail order is that it’s actually a low ticket item so it means that you never quite have enough marketing budget to be able to compete with fashion retailers or big brands.

The challenge is how you become an aspirational, luxury brand with very little marketing budget when you’re trying to build a database and you haven’t got a lot to invest and acquire each buyer. That’s a very difficult thing to round off, but the good news is that once you’ve got there, there are very few people who can follow you.

So, the drive was that once we can achieve this it will be a great place because internet chocolate retailing is hard. And it took us a full ten years to get it working, probably a full five years to get it going and then five years to really refine it.

What sort of loops did you work through before you knew that the business had started to fly?

Underneath the hood of Hotel Chocolat we are several different business models and I think a lot of brand-led businesses have to overcome this issue of being masters of several themes.

One of the things I realised I had to do to make the internet chocolate business work is actually become an expert at online marketing, so I went on lots of courses and read lots of books, even though we had a couple of marketing people at that point. I knew more about it than they did.

I then tried to use their skills in line with mine to fast-track it to a model that worked. Once I’d found the formula I could let the reins go a bit further, but the most I could expect from competent marketers was to maintain the status quo. There would be no seismic shift in the business model and yet we did need to shift it to get to the point where it was worth investing more in. So, step by step, I think it’s good to become an expert in different fields and not just be a one trick pony.

I’ve had to learn about retailing in terms of the shop-keeper skills, the design of physical spaces, things like café models, restaurant models, agriculture, mixing properties of cocoa. Fortunately I’m really interested in these things so it’s not a hardship at all, but I think there are so many things that you need to know being a brand-led business – it comes with the challenge.

That willingness to learn and to really get into the detail to fully understand it. How did you keep faith that you were on the right track?

It was never an issue. We’ve certainly closed quite a few businesses, so we’re not averse to reading the messages. For example, we had a period where we supplied supermarkets with their own label chocolates and the appeal of that was a short-term way to get extra capital into the business.

We know how to create ranges and do exciting things with chocolate and so, very quickly, I was doing most of the chocolates for the two most premium supermarkets. We had two to three years of raking in some decent profits from that, but pretty soon it became apparent that it was leading nowhere, which we fully expected, but how quickly it went from being quite good into being something that we needed to get out of was quite startling.

What sort of timescale are we talking about?

About three years. So, we went from doing nothing, to doing a couple of million pounds and making decent profit again, but ultimately it was distracting. The motives of the supermarkets weren’t straightforward and all the effort wasn’t actually building anything cumulative in terms of a sustainable brand of our own. All the efforts you’ve gone to leave no trace of you, so that’s desperately unappealing.

So, how did we keep the faith? Well, when we created Hotel Chocolat, I was very clear that this is a brand-led business, the brand stands for something, and that then gave me a lot more to defend and I suppose seek strength from. As soon as you’re a brand that means something it becomes alive, rather than just making a few boxes of chocolates every day and then going home.

We managed to turn it around so that it meant something to other people and I can see the light go on in their eyes, and even in years where we weren’t making much money, I could take reassurance in the fact that we were building a brand that was actually heading somewhere and we were building it for the long term.

When I look at companies like Thornton’s, I think one of the reasons that we’re beating them is because they run the business for the short-term. We think that long-term planning will win out. I’ve never wavered, Peter’s never wavered, we’ve always believed in strategy and fortunately had enough success so that it never was a question. We’ve certainly had adversity, but nothing that’s ever seriously made us question what we were doing.

In terms of your customer base and seeing them connect with the brand, when did you get to a tipping point where it just seemed to take on a life of its own?

Ah, yes, it was a clearly discernible tipping point actually. The first when we had our previous brand before Hotel Chocolat. It was a delivered, internet-based, chocolate business called ChocExpress. It described what it did on the tin, but no more, and yet our product was very good. So, we had a reasonable degree of success with that and people would say “I’ve had some of your chocolates recently, and they were surprisingly nice.” “‘Surprisingly’ – why?” I wanted to ask. I started thinking that this brand name isn’t right for us anymore and we needed an extra dimension.

I had come to understand that chocolate has a very strong emotional value and although we were delivering a very good product in terms of functional value, we weren’t really delivering emotional value. So, how could we do that? I then started thinking about a brand which would bring another dimension of escapism. I took advice from people I respected, especially in the internet mail order field, and said that I was thinking about changing the brand name, and most said don’t do it, what you’ve got works really well here, stick with your knitting because if you change the brand name, your customers might not like it.

I suppose their view was that I was 80% towards where I wanted to get, why risk it for another 20%?  I suppose I hadn’t articulated very well that I wanted to go further, so I ignored the advice and created the brand name Hotel Chocolat. It was very successful. We got a bit of a lift from our existing customers who were the most important ones, so we managed to gradually bring them on board, track their buying habits and knew that the re-brand had given us a lift there.

The next thing was to see if it was better at enticing new customers in and that was where it was resoundingly better. I can remember that feeling of getting wind in the sails. When people start liking and talking about your brand on social media and knowing that we never had that with ChocExpress, wow, this is really the power of a good brand. But it’s more than a name plate or a letter head or some smart packaging; it’s got to mean something and you’ve got to stick by it. Being clear about our responsibility in terms of our behaviour, the things we don’t do, the things that we do to protect and nurture that brand, and it’s definitely been the best move we’ve ever made.

How do you explicitly maintain that?

The brand values of Originality, Authenticity and Ethics gives us strong guidance and then using them to interpret into other things. For example, take ethics. We won’t reduce the price of Easter eggs before Easter, so in other words I won’t penalise my best customers who bought their Easter eggs early by selling them at a reduced price, just because we messed up slightly on a stock level for a particular Easter egg. So, it’s more painful, but it’s the right thing to do. Ethics means treating our customers fairly.

So, we’re not like some fashion retailers who put their winter coats on sale before winter is over. That can only be a short-termism management approach that’s crept in that will ultimately hurt them, but other retailers will be doing the same thing and there are many such examples of that.

Then there’s authenticity which, for us, means being cocoa-led which then leads to using less sugar and more cocoa, which leads to a whole product approach. We articulated what the values mean and what we have to think about as a consequence. So, for example, we might want to do a fun product which would certainly sell because it’s got Hotel Chocolat on it, but if it doesn’t tick all of those boxes we’ve defined under our values then we won’t do it. Yes, it might sell for a couple of years, but it’s at the cost of our goodwill and we might make £100,000 profit out of that, but it will cost £500,000 in terms of brand goodwill. So, that clarity of definition makes it quite easy.

You’re saying that the ethics theme continues within authenticity. You constantly look for the right thing by both your customers and your brand and what you stand for.

Definitely. I think that running a highly profitable and socially responsible and ethical business is not incompatible and that’s a message that I try and get out as much as possible. Having an ethical approach incentivises the right behaviours more and, as a result, we’re recruiting and retaining better people, our people are working harder because we have a moral dimension to what we’re trying to do and they are really compelled by that, compared to an approach all about just profit-maximising where tomorrow is forgotten about and customers are forgotten about because we’ll make more profit this year. But what will happen in the subsequent years?

So, one leads to the other. Focusing on the long-term sustainability and being true to your values first and foremost means that, lo and behold, the profit follows.

Yes. My biggest thrill is protecting culture, protecting the brand values, making sure people are getting training on what they are and why they are important. The behaviours of an organisation are key and making sure those behaviours are as healthy as possible. Showing the right behaviours as a leadership team too and us demonstrating that every day.

Leaders that are living the values.

Exactly!

Could you give an example?

We’ve got so many examples of where we’ve taken on people who we just like because they have the right values, then we help them and train them to have the know-how. We’ve also recruited people from another business being unsure about them culturally, but assuming they must know a lot and it’s never worked out.

When we opened Rabot 1745 in Borough Market here, for example, the first six months were a nightmare because I didn’t actually fully apply what I’ve been saying. I thought I’d done enough in terms of menu, concept, products, then I’d assumed that what I needed now is operational know-how from experts in the industry sector.

So, I recruited a really good general manager, a really good restaurant manager and barman who came from best of breed businesses and I said “Just apply your know-how with our differentiated concept and that should work,” and it didn’t. It turns out we have a different operational methodology as well; we don’t just think differently, we do things differently too. They tied themselves up in knots applying their model to our context and it just failed.

The general manager that we have now used to run a gastro pub and has a great attitude. He’s running this site which has a restaurant, a bar, a café, a chocolate shop, as well as making chocolate too and he’s doing a fantastic job.

Your chocolatier in the shop, Louise, was telling me earlier that she previously worked in a shop in Borough Market. When you recruited her, you knew that she understood the culture of Borough Market and how different it is here.

It appears that the culture in Borough Market is quite special in many ways. Many from the outside looking in might come here and see that you too sell food, drink and gifts, the same as many others in the market, so you are in competition. However, I understand that Rabot 1745 is the hub for the market traders themselves and it’s central to the Borough Market community.

A hub – exactly. This is very community-based. We buy our bread from the bread stall just downstairs and we don’t view each other as competitors. On the contrary, we try to support each other. It’s very easy to take a dog in a manger approach and that just does not work, particularly somewhere like this where it is very community-based. There’s a whole culture within the market. If you’re out of that then you may as well not be in the market, but if you’re in you really feel the warmth of it and it helps so much.

How necessary was it for you to understand and immerse yourself in the detail of Borough Market culture in order to get the brand positioned correctly here?

Well, we started our first foray into the cocoa bar concept across the road in a smaller site. We had the cocoa estate in St. Lucia and I came to realise that cocoa had been side-lined by focusing on chocolate and yet there was a whole world of possibility around cocoa too.

We were looking around for a site in London to test out the idea of the cocoa bar, reconstructing the hard core of cocoa drinks. I was looking around some sites in London and this smaller site came up in Borough Market. My agent showed it to me and I said “Yes, this is brilliant,” and he said “It’s not as easy as that, Angus. To get into the market you’ve got to pitch to get into the market and they’ve got to approve you and there are around 50 people going for every site.”

So, I got in touch with the head of the market to find out what I needed to do and he told me, so I worked a proposal up and did the pitch and we got it. They were very keen to point out to me that “We don’t want you to just disappear over the horizon. We back people with passion, you seem to have it, we like your vision and we want to see you around and know that you are on it.” So, I said yes.

And after about three years at our smaller site in Borough Market we knew that the cocoa restaurant concept in St. Lucia really worked and we wanted to bring it to the UK. I’d got to know the market people pretty well by then and we’d built up a good track record with our cocoa shack and wanted to try something bigger. So, I approached them for a bigger site and they said there’s not much happening.

I must have asked the head of the market about ten times and eventually he said “There might be something coming up, it’s not there right now, but get your coat.” So, we walked around and stood across the road from here and he pointed to here. He said “When this railway bridge is finished by Network Rail, they are building an office for me here on instruction of the previous head of the market, would that interest you?”

And he said that if you can satisfy us then you can have this site. There were a lot of twists and turns, including getting permission from the market to build the outdoor dining terrace overlooking the market.

So, that was a classic case of great opportunities coming your way when you are respectful and build the brand values and you get out what you put in really.

What do you believe it is about you that brings people on the journey?

I think people like my enthusiasm. I think I’m very straightforward and can energise them. I can be fun to work with and also at the same time I’m quite demanding. However, for the right sort of people, that’s what they’re looking for. And I have a strong ethical code in terms of how I deal with people so I’ve hardly fallen out with anybody who’s worked for me and the people that I have, it’s more about their emotional situation.

I make sure that when people have to leave the business, and I make it clear early on that at some point we agree that nothing’s forever in business, and when the right time comes I’ll have a straightforward conversation with you, and I’ll make it elegant, but we’ve all got to agree that will have to happen at some point.

It’s a conversation that our HR team has with all of our employees so that on day one, we prepare for exit. In business, skills and motivation are all aligned for a while. The business changes, you change and sometimes that drops out of alignment, and when that does let’s not fall out over it or beat ourselves up. It just happens and it will be for the best and we’ll work it out.

Frank and fearless conversations again…

Yes, very much. And that’s come from really seeing how HR law sometimes forces people to treat other people like factors of production which dehumanises the whole thing. So, with the HR team we’ve agreed that the best way is to deal with that on day one so that we’ve already laid the foundations and it’s part of our cultural values so that we can have an honest, professional, up-front conversation.

Preparing the ground work and then treating people like human beings…

Yes. Whenever we’ve had a problem with people needing to leave the business, the biggest antagonistic factor is going from being part of a team on the inside track to suddenly, for whatever reason, you’re on the outside and we have to deal with you through this HR code which has no warmth and it’s like being a non-person that we don’t know anymore. We see you as a potential problem which makes them feel that they have to be a potential problem.

So, we try to have those conversations the human way, with respect and appreciating that we’ve had a lot of good years together and let’s not spoil that. Life’s too short to fall out over something like that.

Looking back, what other significant personal learning has there been that has unlocked the success of your business?

This is not anything cultural or brand-related per se, but more about functional skills. I think the utmost priority is to be given clear and timely financial information. I can and have run the business on instinct and I think I’ve been too forgiving in the past for slow, caveated financial information.

Last year we employed a top class CFO and he is very effective. He’s shown me what I could’ve had years ago possibly and I really regret not having somebody as good as him around me earlier as I think we could’ve driven harder and faster if we’d had that information already.

So, I would say make no compromise on having one version of the truth out properly and communicated in a really simple way. You could have a thick dossier of data, but what does it say? What should we be doing? My CFO highlights areas and asks questions. For example, our seasonal sales against Thornton’s are up which might mean that we are better than them at seasonal, or it might be that they are better than us at non-seasonal. What do you think it is? And it’s the sort of discussion we have which is good for the business.

That timely and sensitive finger on the pulse, not just looking at historic numbers, but using forward-looking, interpretive data…

Yes. There’s data and there’s data. There’s data which is a hotchpotch that nobody can see the wood for the trees from, and then there’s data that somebody has sifted through and found the nuggets in, and that’s what I’m interested in.

I don’t need all the answers. I just need the main trends to get curious about. That’s where you start making new actions, new decisions, and building opportunities. We’ve been very good on piloting the business on instinct for a very long time, but I now realise what we could’ve done if we’d had a big dollop of proper data alongside the instinct. We could’ve probably done things faster and better.

When you spot new opportunities, is your approach incremental e.g. test it, measure it and refine it?

We’re not big on doing customer surveys and things first. We tend to do more live testing and that’s because we have a direct relationship with our customers. Our normal way is, we come up with an idea, get early input, find a way to bring it to the market in a risk-contained way, watch and observe it, and either build or kill it at that point. So, we couldn’t launch it to our customers if we didn’t 80% believe it was going to work.

We never ask somebody else to verify our idea for us before we do it such as getting management consultants to come in to write a report that’s going to cover us. That’ll never happen in Hotel Chocolat. I tend to think of that approach as mediocre, fearful management from a defensive position.

If you had 30 seconds to give one final nugget of advice to other entrepreneurs and business owners, what would it be?

I’d say that in any business you can make it brand-led. If you’re a service business or a welding business there’s always a chance to make it brand-led. I think that if you can create a brand, that’s going to lead to a stronger culture. It will then differentiate you in the market-place a lot more so, as well as having brilliant products and brilliant execution, you also have the brand that gives you the X factor.

It’s well worth creating and investing in that brand and committing to living by it, so get a bit of brand wow into your business which is underpinned by your culture and living the values. A lot of people think that getting a great brand is using a design agency to think of a whizzy name and a letterhead. No, that’s only 1% of it. The other 99% is: What does it feel like? What does it sound like? What does it taste like? How does it behave? What does it mean? All those questions have to be answered and lived by so it’s a big commitment, but it gives you a solid framework.

Thank you very much indeed.

Very good to chat with you. You have great insight.

I love what I do and what you have shared here is so true to what I believe too. I work hard with businesses on ‘What is it that you stand for? What’s your legacy? How are you going to sustain that?’ Otherwise it’s success today, but what about tomorrow? It’s the ability to grow that sustainable business that can operate without you. It needs others to be as passionate about your brand as you are. It’s the only way in which the business will grow and live and take off without you being tied to it and it being tied to you.

It is, because you get tired, you have personal problems, you have health issues, you go off the boil. As a business owner you can’t sustain 100% forever, so what’s going to happen? If it’s all down to you, your business will inevitably take a dip at some point. How many people rely on the business? Is it responsible? You’re only human. It makes total and utter sense at a logical, financial and rational level that it has to be independent of you.

One of my greatest personal learnings was having qualified as an accountant and having come from that very logical, financially-driven focus on business, I quickly came to realise that you can have the best strategy in the world, but it’s only a piece of paper. It’s culture based on people, their behaviours and mind-set that are the difference to making it come alive.

When business owners keep tight hold of their baby it’s through fear of others not having the same standards, losing control, often subconsciously preserving their position as the ‘hero in the middle of the business’ as you described it. It’s from the fear of not being able to perform as a leader, the security of staying on as manager or doer. They then stifle the growth of their business and the people in it. Hence my qualifying as a leadership coach to support business owners through that.

Yes, they need a bit of something to get them over that hump. Where does that extra little bit of confidence come from? Some people might feel a little bit fraudulent about developing a brand and values for something that essentially doesn’t exist. It’s a set of values that you all decide to live by and yet how might you stand up and say this is something that you ought to come along on? It’s like the fear of standing in the playground shouting “Who’s going to be on my team?”, turning around and there’s nobody there. Everyone has a fear of that and that’s where you come in to say that this really does work. There’s the scientific management stuff, but it’s the brand, values and culture that’s going to make the business that much more exciting.

Yes, I agree. Thank you very much, Angus. It’s been inspirational to meet you.

In brief

If you want you and your business to thrive, don’t be the ‘hero in the middle of your business’, eternally busy, exhausted and stuck in the doing. Who else will truly share your passion and compel others to be involved if you don’t?

Separate the issues and opportunities of alternative courses of action open to the business and have frank and fearless conversations. This can lead to faster growth.

Remember to keep it simple at all times. Refine communication as much as possible and then go back and refine again so that your messages are clear, simple and compelling.

To achieve brand-led success, you must become a master of different themes and an expert in a different array of fields. Understand that your brand means something with its own identity and pulse. Remember you are building it for long-term success, not a short-term gain.

Maintain strong ethics as an organisation. Be loyal to your customers and they will be loyal to you. Treat your suppliers right and they will do right by you. Being true to your values and goodwill will not be compromised at the expense of short-term gain.

Being a socially responsible and ethical business whilst making a profit is achievable, but not all ventures are an instant success. The original internet chocolate retailing business ChocExpress took ten years to refine. Rabot 1745 took six months to start moving smoothly as well as a complete overhaul of the management team.

Having people who share your values and whose attitude aligns and then training them up works. Employing knowledge experts in a particular field or for skills first and foremost, but who don’t have the right alignment individually, does not.

Never compromise on the financial information that you have available. Having financial information with one version of the truth, distilled for the nuggets of key information contained within all the data and communicated in a really simple way will enable you to drive harder and faster.

Lastly, always remember to create, invest and live by your brand. If you fully commit to it, lead with it and role model it, you will have a solid framework for all decisions and a business that will stand the test of time!

Ever since our Tasting Club was founded in 1998 we’ve aimed to send exciting, original and innovative chocolates to our customers every month. As you can imagine, keeping 100,000 chocolate-loving members of our tasting club satisfied with a different selection every month means a great deal of chocolate recipes to create.

Experience a different side of Hotel Chocolat at our restaurants and cafes. Book a table at our stylish restaurants in London and Leeds and savour unique dishes inspired by the best of West Indian and modern British cuisine, enhanced with the subtle savoury spice of roasted cocoa.

Hotel Chocolat is the ultimate gift destination for chocolate gifts and luxury presents for birthdays, anniversaries, celebrations, commiserations, or even apologies! Or, create your own chocolate gift box and we’ll pack it all together in a stunning black box, Hotel Chocolat ribbon and a gift tag with your personal message written inside ready in as little as two hours from store or same-day delivery to your door within hours should you need it.

Or learn the noble art of chocolate making with our experiences and events at The School of Chocolate cocoa vaults in the heart of London’s Covent Garden.