A posh 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.
Tucker, five, drinks a hot chocolate at Knoops. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian
“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.
Angus Thirwell, the Hotel Chocolat chief executive, says the only hot chocolate available used to be terrible – basically a “sugar-based powder that looked brown”. “You put a couple of teaspoons of that into a cup, poured on some boiling water and created what passed as hot chocolate for many decades in the UK.
“Once people taste what can be possible, it’s synonymous with the journey from instant coffee to drinking proper coffee. It’s getting back to that authentic taste of the beans, and it applies as much to the cacao bean as it does to the coffee bean.”
Knoops, which also sells its hot chocolate flakes on its website, was also a lockdown hit. “When people couldn’t go into the shops they bought our flakes and the chocolate makers to recreate the experience at home,” said Knoop. With a growing fanbase, the small chain plans to open 10 more stores in the next 12 months.
Dan Menendez and Anne-Catherine Xhonneux at Knoops. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian
In Knoops’ west London flagship store, the students Anne-Catherine Xhonneux and Dan Menendez are catching up over a 72% and a 73%. “I really like hot chocolate so I like to be able to choose the percentage,” says Xhonneux. Her drink is from Peru and promises hints of caramel and cashew and she can taste the “nuttiness”. Menendez could expect “citrus, honey and caramel”, but says his taste buds haven’t been the same since he had Covid.
At weekends, troops of teenagers queue up to buy Knoop’s hot chocolate, but he says the appeal is across all ages and pockets, from office workers to gym goers, retirees and families enjoying a weekend treat. Its drinks start at about £3 but, for those brave enough to order one, a large 100% from Solomon Islands costs £6.20.
After the hiatus caused by the lockdowns, Britons have sought out the experience of visiting high-street coffee shops again, says Jeffrey Young, the chief executive of consultancy Allegra Strategies, with sales approaching 90% of pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2021. “If nothing else, Covid taught us that coffee shops are part of the fabric of our society,” he said. “You can get hot chocolate in most places but these premium specialists are carving out a niche.”
If you take the long view, chocolate houses are not new, adds Thirlwell. “We’re rediscovering what we lost. In the 1700s in London, there were more chocolate houses than coffee shops.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/mar/12/people-are-bored-with-coffee-how-posh-hot-chocolate-is-conquering-the-uk
