What next for Hotel Chocolat after its sweet £534m deal with Mars?
Hotel Chocolat founder Angus Thirlwell says the surprise deal with Mars represents a “meeting of minds”, but after a torrid year what will the acquisition mean for the retailer?
Even for a business that deals in confectionery, the announcement this morning that Hotel Chocolat’s board had accepted a £534m acquisition offer from multinational conglomerate Mars has come as a sweet surprise.
The business, which has 125 stores in the UK and 21 in Japan, plus a luxury hotel on its cacao farm on the Caribbean island of St Lucia, had been going from strength to strength during the pandemic.
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