Hotel Chocolat hunts for new Yorkshire stores

Luxury chocolatier Hotel Chocolat reported a steep rise in half year profits and said it is confident about its key Mother's Day and Easter trading periods.
Hotel Chocolat is seeing high demand for its Easter rangeHotel Chocolat is seeing high demand for its Easter range
Hotel Chocolat is seeing high demand for its Easter range

The group, which has identified Yorkshire as a key target market, said pre-tax profits jumped 28 per cent to £11.2m in the six months to December 25.

Co-founder and CEO Angus Thirlwell said the group's Yorkshire stores performed well and it is on the hunt for new sites in the region.

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"We are combing up and down Yorkshire looking for new sites," he said.

"The Leeds store was our best performer over Christmas.

“The people of Yorkshire are prepared to pay for quality. Yorkshire is a very affluent county and all our stores do really well there.”

Hotel Chocolat is looking for more shops in the region following the success of its new stores in market towns. It already has stores in Leeds, York, Harrogate​, Sheffield,​ Meadowhall, a restaurant in Leeds and a cafe in York.​

Looking ahead, the group is bullish about Easter, Mother's Day and Father's Day.

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For the first time the firm has launched an Easter range for kids featuring chocolate chicks, bunny rabbits and lambs.

"We deliberately swerved away from doing things for children as we wanted to be escapist and racy, but we've had so many requests for a children's range we thought we have to start doing it," said Mr Thirwell.

"We want to get young people to taste good chocolate early on."

The kids' range features the same high quality ingredients as the adult ranges.

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"The white chocolate lamb is original and creative. The biggest ingredient is not sugar - as it is with every other white chocolate - it's cocoa butter, which is a healthy fat for children," said Mr Thirlwell.

Hotel Chocolat said revenue rose 14 per cent to £62.5m over the half year period.

Analyst Wayne Brown at Liberum said: "Hotel Chocolat's interim results are ahead of expectations resulting in 3 per cent profit upgrades.

"Outperformance in revenue growth alongside margin expansion lays the foundations for a positive outlook in the second half and beyond.

"Underlying momentum is strong and the management team are delivering against their stated objectives as laid out at the time of the IPO in June 2016."