Chocolate made for drinking

Brian Watt, managing director, Hans Sloane, discusses his hot chocolate for connoisseurs.

What is your background?

I have worked in a variety of roles for brands including Terry‘s Chocolate Orange, Toblerone and Milka.
What inspired you to start the business?

I was looking for a start up that needed help and eventually found Hans Sloane. Once I had invested I became more and more involved until I eventually began running it.

Who did you work with on product development?

We visited supermarkets and chocolate shops and tasted lots of different products to help us to identify where the gaps in the market were.

Were there any formulation issues to overcome?

We decided early on that the company mission would be to bring the taste of chocolate back to drinking chocolate, so it was essential that we got the formulation right. It needed to be a great tasting drinking chocolate that had a rich flavour and smooth texture, whether it was made with milk or water. It also had to be a high quality product with no additives or preservatives. One of our biggest dilemmas was whether to make the product ourselves or to outsource production. It would have been cheaper to outsource, but we didn’t want it to be made in some huge factory where they would also be producing our competitors’ products. Our drinking chocolate is still created by skilled chocolatiers and packed by hand, something we’re really proud of.

What are the unique selling points of the brand?

For a lot of chocolate brands, making drinking chocolate is a way of using up the leftovers from other chocolate products. Our focus is the drinking chocolate. Our drinking chocolate uses pure tempered chocolate beads with a beautiful finish that helps ensure they melt perfectly in hot milk or water. Finding the perfect way to package the product also took time as we wanted to be different from the rest of the market. We’re proud of our product and how good it looks and wanted people to be able to see it, so we had to put a window in the pack.

What type of retail outlets do you sell through?

We achieved our first supermarket listing in March 2014, less than six months after we relaunched, which was a fantastic achievement. Hans Sloane is now available in 260 Waitrose stores and 400 Tesco stores nationwide, as well as in a range of cafes and even at Hampton Court Palace. We produce 1kg barista packs, which are perfect for caterers.

Who is your target consumer?

The premium end of the chocolate beverage market has been expanding among younger consumers who want to know the provenance of the products they consume. Women aged 25-55 love hot chocolate. Our customers are willing to spend a little more because they appreciate the high quality of our product. People are thinking more and more about what’s in the chocolate they eat, and an important part of our mission is to educate the public on how and why they should upgrade their hot chocolate choice as well.

What are your best sellers?

Smooth Milk is number one. However, at our tasting and sampling events, the Rich Dark is the most popular.

How has the range developed?

First we added a Natural Honey drinking chocolate, and then an origin range, allowing consumers to taste the difference between Madagascan and Ecuadorian cocoa. In autumn 2014, we introduced our first single serve product – a cocoa pod filled with chocolate beads that you just pop in the mug before pouring over the hot milk or water and stirring to create a drink. We also created a Christmas bauble and Easter egg drinking chocolate. The Christmas bauble did fantastically well, selling 5,000 units in two months.

How do you promote the brand?

We sample in stores as well as at consumer fairs and trade fairs. If we want consumers to upgrade their tastes in drinking chocolate, they need to taste the product to understand why.

What are your plans for the future of the brand?

We’re currently focusing on ensuring we have a strong base in the UK. We have had a lot of enquiries from abroad but we want to get everything right in our home market first, so we have a model that we can roll out to other countries.