Newly-acquired Hotel Chocolat is expanding its physical store presence across UK in retail parks and on high streets. News of Mars buying the premium chocolate brand first emerged in November 2023. It was a surprise move as less than six months earlier, Hotel Chocolat announced a loss of £800,000, a significant drop from its £2.17 million figure a year before.
The brand put the loss down to a lacklustre love of luxury chocolate among consumers, growing inflationary pressures, the impact of international expansion plans falling flat and its subsequent restructuring process.
New larger retail spaces
In its first big move since Mars acquired the brick-and-mortar confectionery brand earlier in the year, Hotel Chocolat will open 25 new stores around the UK. Unlike previous openings, we can expect Hotel Chocolat’s new releases to showcase larger stores. The brand aims to create an immersive leisure experience for existing and new customers.
“We know that our customers really engage with our ethically driven stories, our events and our brilliant store teams,” says a spokesperson from Hotel Chocolat. The brand’s stores will open with various features, piggybacking off its marketing initiatives to boost engagement opportunities. Hotel Chocolat will highlight its From Love Match events designed to help its customers discover their flavour profiles, along with samples of its new product developments on its Wall of Chocolate.
As customers become more demanding of retail experiences overall, we’re well placed to create an immersive experience in our physical stores
Hotel Chocolat spokesperson
“We want to bring that experience to new locations and new customers, creating an even bigger community of chocolate lovers across the UK,” Hotel Chocolat’s spokesperson says. The brand’s larger footprint stores will enable the chocolatier to give additional space to gifting, hampers, and click-and-collect, providing more choices for shoppers.
Hotel Chocolat’s growth strategy
The brand says its 25 new units will be the first place consumers can try Hotel Chocolat’s nature-positive cacao. The brand aims to bring to life its story of gentle farming and its nature-positive cacao ingredient.
“Demand for our products through our retail channel is greater than ever before, and as customers become more demanding of retail experiences overall, we’re well placed to create an immersive experience in our physical stores,” says the company’s spokesperson.
In the brand’s new larger stores, Hotel Chocolat plans to showcase its chocolate products, gifts and drinking chocolate via its Velvetiser Café. One of its chocolate-drinking destination’s key aims is to allow the brand to bring ‘more cocoa, less sugar’ products to those who love them and are curious to try them.
Mars x Hotel Chocolat collab creations
Hotel Chocolat remains a standalone business as part of the Mars Worldwide company. The chocolate giant completed its acquisition of the brand in January 2024 in a purchase deal worth $662.25m (€608m). “Mars will support plans to accelerate our growth and serve more customers with our much-loved cacao-loaded and ethically driven chocolate,” says Hotel Chocolat’s spokesperson.
Many of the brand’s customers are also passionate about ethics, which remains another key focus area for Hotel Chocolat. The brand states it has made progress by building the teams’ knowledge via its direct farmers in Saint Lucia and its gentle farming programme in Ghana.
“However, real long-term improvements in cocoa agriculture require long-term commitment and determination,” says the company spokesperson. Hotel Chocolat says that as Mars shares similar values and priorities to them, the multinational company will help the brand supercharge its short and long-term objectives.