Hotel Chocolat’s new store in Covent Garden shows what can be done by thinking beyond the wrapper.

Think of chocolate selling and how it’s done. Traditionally, it’s been about bars of the sweet stuff being made available in different sized packets and displayed on a counter or, for the more discerning, wrapped in individual, bite-sized pieces with a price to match. What it has not been about is a reach-me-down chic store environment that shows the process by which chocolate is produced, with a view to encouraging engagement and dwell time. Yet that is the reality of the new Roast & Conch store in the Seven Dials area of Covent Garden.  

The idea is that of Hotel Chocolat co-founder and managing director Angus Thirlwell. He says the underlying idea behind what’s been done at this two-floor store is to take shoppers through the process that leads from cocoa pod to a cup of hot chocolate. 

Arriving at the store, the first thing you notice is that there is actually no mention of the words Hotel or Chocolat on the store exterior. In fact, this looks, for all the world, less like a chocolate shop and a great deal more like a cafe. To an extent the impression is confirmed when you pass beneath the awning and wander into the store. 

To the left is a complex piece of machinery that has, apparently, something to do with the beans that are taken from a cocoa pod. Head downstairs and the engine room of this process becomes apparent. As well as being a cafe, much of the counter is a quasi-factory – with space set aside for crushing the beans to a paste, heating the resulting mixture and then using the outcome to form the basis of a chocolate drink.

All very informative and when coupled with the constant images of the Hotel Chocolat (yes, it exists and is at the heart of the retailer’s cocoa plantation on St Lucia) with its lush tropical surrounds, then you might be tempted to dig deep. And if you do so, then the rough-hewn ambience of the basement, with its used wood and rusting metal may just persuade you that you’re part of a Caribbean stage set.

A cut above

Heading upstairs you begin to realise that as well as a cocoa factory and a place where you can take the weight off your feet, this is a chocolate and chocolate derivatives shop. However, in place of the usual shiny wrappers and gold or silver foil, the packaging looks almost recycled and for those seeking a gift, there is a distinctly premium feel to the offer. 

And this perhaps is the point of Hotel Chocolat as a brand and Roast & Conch as a store. This may appear to be at the top end of the market – that’s what this kind of rough luxe environment usually indicates, but it is only a notch or two above what many of the other mid-market operators are doing. The clever part about all of this is that this is a retailer that has seduced shoppers by providing them with alternative environments as far as chocolate selling is concerned and carrying them with it into a different part of the market.

Mass premium is one of those dreadful phrases that gains currency owing to its relative utility and in this instance it is quite hard to see another term that might more readily be applied. In essence, Hotel Chocolat succeeds by being more expensive than you might normally consider when buying chocolate, but it is not prohibitively so. The other point is that this format from Hotel Chocolat succeeds by breaking the conventionally accepted norms. 

Rough luxe is something that has been happening in fashion for some years now, but when it comes to the world of food it is only slowly gaining traction. For the moment at least, this is a retailer that is leading the way in terms of how a specific commodity can be offered.