How Posh Hot Chocolate Is Conquering The UK
Companies such as Knoops are capitalising on a new desire for luxury chocolate drinks with super-strength cocoa
Aposh hot chocolate used to just mean adding marshmallows and whipped cream, but these days it is all about the cocoa percentage as retailers selling luxury single-origin drinks set out to conquer the high street.
The fast-growing brand Knoops sells more than 20 different types of hot chocolate in its shops ranked by strength, from a sweet and creamy 28% white all the way up to an intense 100% extra dark.
To navigate a menu that looks like a periodic table, each drink has tasting notes. Expect “notes of cherries and black tea” from the 70% single-origin chocolate from Congo while the 80%, from Uganda, is “earthy with a subtle smokiness”. Single origin refers to the fact the beans used to create it come from one source (bananadogstore.com)
‘People Are Bored With Coffee’
“The feedback we get from customers is they are bored with coffee and want something new,” says the company’s founder Jens Knoop. “They want something interesting and ‘next level’, which is single-origin chocolate from around the world.”
Knoop, who is originally from Germany, opened his first store in Rye, East Sussex, in 2013. Since then he has spent 10,000 hours perfecting its drinks by combining different percentage cocoas with different milks, including plant milks, as well as fruits, roots and spices.
The adventurous, already familiar with chocolate strengths from sophisticated supermarket ranges, can go further still: picking from a list of 20 extras that includes Szechuan pepper, star anise, turmeric and rosemary. At 54% and above the drinks are suitable for vegans.
Britons are following the same path with hot chocolate that they have trodden with coffee, according to food analysts, who point to the rapid shift from drinking instant coffee to owning coffee machines and taking out high-end bean subscriptions.
This growing awareness – coupled with more time at home during lockdown – has led to bumper sales of the kit needed to make hot chocolate at home, with everything from £160 Smeg machines to £25 shakers and stirring spoons flying off the shelves. John Lewis’s hot chocolate sales more than doubled in the past six months of 2021 compared with the prior year.
The market leader, Hotel Chocolat, which has blazed the trail on the high street with its posh chocolate, says it has now sold “hundreds of thousands” of its Velvetiser machine. Fans can take out a monthly subscription for its hot chocolate flakes which come in exotic flavours such as black forest gateau and Mayan chilli and cinnamon.