Our Story | Hotel Chocolat

IT STARTED WITH SPIRIT

When the very first Hotel Chocolat store opened its doors in North London in 2004, it was the start of a revolution in British chocolate. Two entrepreneurs, Angus Thirlwell and Peter Harris, were on a mission to make chocolate exciting again.

As our retail estate continues to expand so does our ambition by adding new and more immersive ways to explore our brand through cafés, outlets, and factory stores. We also offer a luxury eco-hotel on our working cacao farm in the Caribbean and have set out to bring chocolate happiness to the American market.

We are on a continual journey of development and growth, yet everything we do is still guided by the three unwavering values that we started with – and it always will be…

ORIGINALITY

We’re constantly striving to be fresh, creative, and innovative, and always one surprising step ahead. We take inspiration from everything we love; from the fruit at our cacao farms’ lush rainforest surroundings to classic British desserts and tipples. Right from the start we’ve never played by the rules of what people said a chocolate company should be.

Revolution doesn’t happen by following convention

When we first started making our Easter eggs, more than a decade ago, experts advised us to make them as thin as possible. We did the opposite, opting for ridiculously thick shells that are still satisfyingly snappable.

Everybody said a bar of chocolate should be equally divided into bite-sized pieces – but squares are predictable, so we broke the mould and made our Slabs, inspired by the shape of molten chocolate when you pour it onto the cool marble of a chocolatier’s table.

Hot chocolate was commonly made with lack-lustre powders, or by standing over a hot stove whisking grated chocolate into milk. We knew there had to be a better way, so we invented the Velvetiser™ for barista-grade drinking chocolate, at home, at the touch of a button.

Our cafés are yet another innovation: we’re reviving the centuries-old ritual of drinking chocolate houses, alongside a curated menu of tea, barista-grade coffee, and carefully crafted accompaniments. From our own brownies to biscuits, cacao-infused ice cream, and in select locations, freshly made, Saint Lucian-inspired pastries.

But all this only scratches the surface. We’ve also created the world’s first single-côte chocolate, developed our own chocolate genre, Supermilk, and created our own milk chocolate alternative made with finely milled hazelnuts instead of milk. We’ve also innovated with cacao cuisine, from spiced cacao nib ketchup to white chocolate horseradish and even cacao gin. There’s always something new and surprising emerging from our Inventing Room…

AUTHENTICITY

We’re one of the world’s few chocolate makers to actually grow cacao on our beautiful Saint Lucian cacao farm, Rabot Estate. Working with nature and fellow farmers we’ve humbly learnt the intricacies of growing cacao, right from the tree. Connecting cacao-growing with imaginative chocolate crafting makes us unique in the UK and gives us an in-depth understanding of the factors that impact the final flavour of our chocolate, right from the roots.

We believe cacao should be cherished

Centuries ago Mayans revered the potent cacao bean as a gift from the gods, but somewhere along the way its power has been lost in translation. As sugar prices dropped, British chocolate has focused increasingly on sweetness. Much of the world’s ‘chocolate’ is laden with sugar. Some milk chocolate bars contain more than twice as much sugar as cacao.

When crafting our chocolates our mantra has always been ‘more cacao, less sugar’. Cacao will always be our number one ingredient, even in milk and white chocolate. Our house-grade milk chocolates are 40%, 50% and 65% cacao, and even our white chocolate is 36% cacao butter – far above the average. This balance of cacao to sugar is crucial: high levels of sugar dull the flavours of the cacao itself, denying you all those nuanced notes such as citrus, red and yellow fruits, coffee and brownie and masking the quality of the cacao. We’re committed to using only real, carefully selected ingredients.

As for our new recipe ideas – they all come directly from our in-house chocolatiers, never off-the-shelf. Every day they’re hard at work imagining, refining and crafting innovative recipes in our Cambridgeshire Inventing Room.

ETHICS

You work too hard for bad chocolate. Farmers work too hard for cheap cacao. We’ve been challenging the status quo for cacao farming since 2002. We want to bring the world’s love of chocolate back to the farmers who make it possible, with a fairer share of the rewards and the tools they need to grow exceptional cacao. 

Gentle Farming

We’re committed to working with cacao farmers to develop a better way for cacao farming: one that’s positive for nature and positive for farmers, helping both to thrive.

As cacao farmers ourselves, running our own organic cacao farm in Saint Lucia, we have seen cacao-growing challenges first-hand. Working with farmers and experts in both Ghana and Saint Lucia, we began our journey towards a better way for cacao farming 20 years ago, developing what we call gentle farming methods.

We also work with cooperatives and grower schemes in other parts of the world that are aligned with our ethical principles. Where we’re able, we never let things go to waste. We use every part of the cacao bean – such as the cacao shells in our teaolat infusions – and we don’t throw out chocolates just because they don’t look quite right. Misshapen chocolates that are still made with our premium ingredients go into our ‘Ugly But Good’ bags.

You could say we’ve been busy. And we still are, but whatever we’re doing, we know that it’s only possible because of our customers, and we do everything with them at heart. We’ve loved sharing new ways to experience cacao since we started out over 20 years ago. Here’s to the next 20.