Last Updated on September 14, 2026
Drinking chocolate 12% of retail sales, March 2023
Up 1,132% on pre-Covid levels
VIP.ME loyalty at 2.75 million members
Bought by Mars for £534m, completed January 2024
The move
In 2018, a chocolate company started selling a kitchen appliance. The Velvetiser is a small countertop machine that heats milk and whisks real chocolate flakes into a drink. It sits next to the kettle. It cost more than a box of chocolates and it did not, on its own, contain any chocolate.
That is the move. Hotel Chocolat sold the equipment, not the consumable, and let the equipment create the reason to buy the consumable again.
Boxed chocolate is an occasion business. Christmas, Easter, birthdays, sorry, thank you, Valentine’s. A customer might buy four times a year and never think about you in between. Drinking chocolate at home is a habit business. If the machine is on the worktop, the sachets run out, and running out is a purchase.
The numbers followed the habit. By March 2023, drinking chocolate accounted for 12% of retail sales and had grown 1,132% against pre-Covid levels. The company told the market that same year it was close to a million UK households owning a Velvetiser. VIP.ME, the loyalty scheme used to price and reorder, had reached 2.75 million members, up 152% since 2019, and management said both Velvetiser owners and VIP.ME members interacted with the brand more often.
It did not fix everything. Group revenue for the 53 weeks to 2 July 2023 fell 10% to £204.5m. Mars bought the company later that year for £534m.
Why it worked
Sell the kettle and you have sold the tea.
The Velvetiser is not a lock in the technical sense. There is no chip, no proprietary pod, nothing stopping anybody tipping in a supermarket own-brand. The lock is softer and stronger than that. It is a recipe, a ritual and a piece of kit sitting in plain sight in the kitchen, and the recipes that work best in it are the ones Hotel Chocolat sells.
That matters because it changes the question the customer asks. Before the machine, the question was whether to spend £20 on chocolate today, which is a decision with an answer that is usually no. After the machine, the question is whether you have run out, which is not really a decision at all. Businesses spend fortunes trying to be remembered. An object on the worktop does the remembering for you.
The second thing it did was hand the company a reason to know who its customers were. A gift shop sells to a person buying for somebody else, and learns almost nothing. An appliance owner registers, reorders and joins the loyalty scheme, which is why the drinks side became the main source of subscription customers. Occasion buyers are strangers. Habit buyers are a list.
The principle
Sell the thing that creates the next purchase, not just the purchase. If you can put something into a customer’s life that quietly requires you again, whether that is a piece of equipment, a plan, a schedule or a record you hold, you stop paying to be remembered every time. The goal is not to trap anyone. It is to make coming back the path of least resistance.
Steal this
You do not need a factory or a product designer. You need one thing that sits in the customer’s life and creates the next job.
Work out what your customer runs out of. Every trade has one. Filters. Consumables. Salt for the water softener. Bookkeeping months. Root regrowth at six weeks. If nothing runs out, find what expires instead, such as certificates, warranties, insurance and service intervals. Write down the interval in weeks. That interval is your business model.
Install something that keeps the interval visible. Hotel Chocolat’s version sits on the worktop. Yours might be a sticker inside the boiler cupboard with the service date and your number, a card in the meter box, a labelled folder you set up, or a record on your system that triggers a reminder. It has to be physical or automatic. A customer’s intention to call you in March is not a system.
Make the reorder take less effort than the alternative. The moment a customer has to compare prices, you are back in a competition you might lose. One text with a date and a price. One link that repeats the last order. One standing appointment made at the end of the current one. The salon booking the next cut before the client leaves is doing exactly this.
Keep the list, and treat it as the asset. The point of all this is that you end up knowing who your repeat customers are and when they need you. That list is worth more than your website. Keep it somewhere you own, back it up, and never let it live only in a platform someone else controls.
Measure repeat rate, not sales. Count how many customers bought twice in twelve months. If you have never counted it, the number will be worse than you think, and it is the only number that tells you whether any of this is working.
Sources & further reading
- Hotel Chocolat dials back digital-led strategy to focus on store growth · Marketing Week
- Hotel Chocolat Group plc full year results, 53 weeks to 2 July 2023 · Company announcement via Investegate
- Mars completes acquisition of Hotel Chocolat · Mars
- Mars acquires Hotel Chocolat in £534m deal · Food Manufacture
- Hotel Chocolat raises guidance as Velvetiser drinks system hits the spot · Proactive Investors
The Whito verdict
Hotel Chocolat took a business that depended on people remembering it four times a year and gave itself a permanent position on the customer’s worktop. The drinks category went from marginal to 12% of retail sales and became the main source of its subscription customers. Group revenue still fell 10% in FY23, so the machine was not a cure for everything, but it changed the shape of the relationship from occasion to habit, and Mars paid £534m for the result.
Your job is to find the thing in your customer’s life that quietly asks for you again, and then to put it there deliberately instead of hoping. Work out the interval, make it visible, make the reorder effortless, and count the people who come back. Repeat business is not loyalty. It is design.
Build Stage
What gives your customer a reason to come back?
Check your site free and find out whether anything on it earns a second purchase.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Velvetiser and why does it matter commercially?
It is a countertop machine Hotel Chocolat launched in 2018 that heats and whisks real chocolate into a drink at home. Commercially it matters because it turned an occasion purchase into a repeat one. By March 2023 drinking chocolate was 12% of retail sales and had grown 1,132% on pre-Covid levels.
Does the Velvetiser force you to buy Hotel Chocolat sachets?
No. There is no proprietary pod or technical lock, and nothing prevents an owner using another brand’s chocolate. The pull is the recipe range and the habit rather than the hardware, which is the part a small business can copy without engineering anything.
How does a service business apply a razor and blades model?
By finding what your customer runs out of or what expires, then installing something that keeps that interval visible and makes reordering easier than shopping around. A service sticker with a date, a standing appointment booked before the customer leaves, or an annual certificate reminder all do the same job as the machine on the worktop.
If your business is named here and you think we have a fact wrong, email hello@whito.co.uk and we will check it and correct it. If you want to respond, send us a statement and we will publish it alongside. Full detail: Corrections, right of reply and removals.
