Hotel Chocolat is gearing up for another crack at international expansion in the US.
The retailer was planning to open a “couple of stores” in Chicago in spring 2025, co-founder and president Angus Thirlwell told The Times. Hotel Chocolat would have a “double-digit number” of stores across the US by 2026, he added.
The Grocer understands the first new stores are set to open in March.
It marks the beginning of a new period of expansion under owner Mars, which acquired the premium retailer for £538m in November 2023.
At the time of the Mars deal, Thirlwell – who has been replaced as CEO, but remains as president – said the acquisition would help to enable global expansion, having previously struggled to grow the Hotel Chocolat brand overseas.
Its previous overseas efforts all but ended in July 2022, when Hotel Chocolat shuttered all of its US stores – four of which were in New York – and placed its Japanese business into civil rehabilitation as part of a restructure of its international businesses, following financial and supply struggles.
The “timing” of its previous US push, which happened just before the Covid-19 pandemic, had been “terrible”, Thirlwell told The Times, adding that Hotel Chocolat had already re-entered the US market, with a “low-risk” DTC model for its Velvetiser drinking chocolate.
The planned new US push coincides with a renewed expansion of Hotel Chocolat’s UK footprint announced in July, with proposals to open 25 new stores by autumn 2025.
Alongside opening new stores in Belfast and Ilkley in Yorkshire, Hotel Chocolat will also roll out its premium hospitality focused Velvetiser Café format and has been investing in its bakery in Leeds and manufacturing plant in Royston to facilitate the rollout. The latest Velvetiser Café opened in Eldon Square shopping centre in Newcastle on 30 November, with a new “concept store” set to open in Richmond, London in December.
The UK remained the retailer’s primary growth opportunity, it said. Hotel Chocolat would aim to open circa 25 stores a year over the next three years, Thirlwell told The Times.
“In the UK we’ve got 140 stores and we think America is a bigger market than the UK,” Thirlwell told The Times.
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