af Stuart Barraclough 6 år siden
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Take Aways
If you want to find out more or just want to treat yourself, click the attached hyperlink to visit the Hotel Chocolate website.
In the words of Forest Gump's mother "life is like a box of chocolate. You never know what you're going to get".
The same could be said about running a company and I will examine some of the means that Hotel Chocolat runs its operations.
I have chosen Hotel Chocolat as this is an industry I know nothing about and offers the opportunity to apply the concepts studied in the Operations Management course to a real company.
Hotel Chocolat sells perishable consumer goods (chocolate) and has begun to diversify its business by selling other foods, developing non-edible products, opening cafés, running a cocoa estate and a luxury boutique hotel.
There is a wide range of areas within the company but I have chosen to take a deep dive into managing the customer experience whilst also identifying some other key areas of the business such as new product development, how it continues to improve its offerings, resilience strategy and matching supply and demand.
I will also attempt to demonstrate how many of these activities combine as part of the company's overall strategy for success.
Two entrepreneurs, Angus Thirlwell and Peter Harris, founded Hotel Chocolat as they followed their dream to make chocolate exciting again.
Based in the UK, Hotel Chocolat has 103 shops, cafés and restaurants plus three boutiques in Copenhagen. They also boast a working cocoa plantation in St Lucia in the Caribbean which is home to their luxury hotel.
It specialises in luxury chocolate and has built its business around the principles of originality, authenticity and ethical sourcing.
Key milestones
1993 Hotel Chocolat began selling chocolates online, becoming one of the UK’s earliest ever ‘e-tailers’.
1998 The Chocolate Tasting Club created: a vast community of chocolate tasters who receive unique selections each month.
2004 The first-ever Hotel Chocolat shop opens in north London.
2006 To realise their dream of becoming cocoa farmers, Angus and Peter bought a beautiful 250-year-old cocoa plantation in Saint Lucia – Rabot Estate.
2010 Hotel Chocolat’s first cafe opens in London’s Borough Market, serving a range of innovative cocoa-centred food and drinks. It quickly becomes popular.
2011 A luxury hotel, restaurant and spa, was opened on the cocoa plantation in Saint Lucia. People started flying in from New York for the food.
2016 Listed on London Stock Exchange
2017 Launched in Hong Kong
Hotel Chocolat's core product offering, chocolate, traditionally has highly seasonal fluctuations in sales.
From my research this has been addressed in the following ways:
Kanban or 'pull strategy' is a scheduling system which companies can use to help manage production lines and follow a Just in Time approach.
Hotel Chocolat has an online subscription model allowing customers to have regular deliveries of chocolates. The regularity and lead time for these orders allows for the implementation of Kanban.
Retail stores operate predominantly on a push strategy as they need to have products in store to be able to sell them. As the products Hotel Chocolat is selling are perishable goods it is essential that they manage stock efficiently.
Hotel Chocolat continues to develop new products with a link back to its core material cocoa. These new products include:
From my research, HC employs the Flexible Approach to product development as there is overlap between the concept development and the implementation.
The Hotel Chocolat Customer Experience exemplifies many of the Schmitt Principles of customer experience.
The cooking classes and events show how experiences don't come randomly. They have to be planned and the idea that to maximise the customer experience you need to build up different kind of experiences.
The layout and choice and location of products within the stores demonstrates an obsessive attention to the details.
They also show a consistent methodology by their commitment to the production of high quality chocolate with low sugar content and providing an ever-growing variety of uses and products.
Hotel Chocolat's magazine provides a way to keep its customers updated on new products and to keep them enged with the brand. It also contains recipes and suggestions on ways to use their products which will also help drive up sales.
Hotel Chocolat organises Corporate Adventures, cooking classes and even children's chocolate workshops. By bringing the customer inside the world of chocolate in a fun and engaging way creates a memorable experience, and an entirely different means to attract and intereact with their customers. This will have a lasting and positive impact fostering an affinity towards the brand and increasing customer loyalty.
It and will also encourage the customers to share their experience with others thus providing another means of marketing.
Hotel Chocolat has introduced cafes into its stores. This has not only provided an additional source of revenue through sales of drinks and cakes but also enhanced the customer experience.
The 'coffee-shop' culture that Starbucks has so effectively developed is huge in the UK and Hotel Chocolat focusses on providing a comfortable environment to enjoy a coffee while also being able to browse its store.
Hotel Chocolat has invested heavily in its website and mobile application to provide a wide range of services to enhance the customer experience which has resulted in an 8% increase in online retail.
The online platform allows you to navigate the products with ease, filtering by product type, price and dietary requirement. There is a wide range of suggested gift categories such as 'summer', 'father's day' and 'for him/her' and even gift suggestions associated with 'mood and interests' such as cheer up and romantic gifts and Champagne Lifestyle.
Online ordering also allows for customisation as visitors are invited to build their own gift box from the full range of chocolate, beauty and beverage products on offer.
Each Hotel Chocolat store is carefully designed with bright lights and deliberately positioned displays to reflect the premium product they are selling.
The layout of the store is purposefully orchestrated to maximise spending by having small, cheaper bags of chocolates by the till to encourage impulsive extra purchases even when a customer may have only intended to buy a gift for a friend. By doing this they not only increase sales but by occupying the customers with more products to look at in the queue, it is a means queue management as unoccupied time feels longer than occupied time.
Queue Management
In peak periods it is inevitable that there will be some need to queue. Some of ways I have identified that Hotel Chocolat is trying to manage queueing is:
