Hotel Chocolat

would be shocked now if I went into the shop and managed to find an advent calendar for a pound.

A Hotel Chocolat one is, I believe it's

11...

Hotel Chocolat?

Chocolat is 11 or 12 pounds, I think.

Hotel Chocolat.

Or 15 even.

We

So I did some work for John Lewis.

I helped Debenhams launch their very first transactional website and then names everybody will be familiar with Hotel Chocolat, Scots of Stowe, the Cotswold Company, the White Company so that yeah that was my career background before that.

That's what you're doing at that time when you decided to i had a

brief sojourn with the borough of pool um where i uh i took on a trend they called it a transformation project to um help save money because budgets were being cut and it was taking over the procurement team and helping the council to uh save an awful lot of money off their bottom line

Starting with food and grocery, there were several updates this week.

Hotel Chocolat reported a loss of just under £12 million in the year to 27 December 2025, compared with a profit of nearly £11 million previously.

Sales fell by almost 37% to around £225 million, reflecting a longer reporting period in the previous year.

Higher cocoa and employment costs also reduced gross margin by almost 5 percentage points to around 58%.

That's on your Sparks card.

Hotel Chocolat I think there's a minimum spend but you, again, get a free item when you go in there.

Um, Matalan- Apparently you also get a discount on your birthday and H&M give you 25% off your favorite item for the day.

So if you go in- Your favorite item? Yes Really? If you go in, like, that's the way they word it.

So we basically outsourced the account management to, to Tambo.

And then the other thing we did is, uh, identified a business that did brilliantly direct to consumer, which is Hotel Chocolat.

Mm.

And the person there who was the head of direct to consumer, we hired her, Michelle, and she came and worked for us and did her magic at Lilly's Kitchen.

And I am disappointed, Ryan.

Where is Hotel Chocolat stuff? [laughs] That's a-

[laughs]

... great, great store.

Weinraub further noted that the branch is another win for Farpoint Development and Saxony Properties, which bought the building at Michigan Avenue and Pearson Street two years ago.

The more than 117,000 square feet space has been empty since Uniqlo left in 2021, but British chocolatier Hotel Chocolat recently signed an 11-year lease and opened a store and cafe in the location.

The local firm planning to redevelop the shuttered main building of Ford City Mall into warehouses has added a new public park and CTA bus terminal to its $200 million vision.

Sweeteners, it hopes, will help win approval this week from city planning officials.