Darren Williams
Head of Retail
Everyone is immensely proud of working for Hotel Chocolat, and you can feel this in the atmosphere in our stores and offices.
I joined the business as Head of Retail in January 2009. We had around 30 stores and were a very small team back then.
We have since added Regional Managers as we have grown and I am immensely proud to lead a brilliant Retail estate whose aim is not only to showcase our amazing products, but to provide Guests a warm, authentic and knowledgeable service, in beautiful stores that are known for world class standards. One of the things I am most passionate about is ‘Growth without compromise’, and we have never lost sight of the business we have grown up from, and this includes the way that we manage our people. We are successful because we are unique, to be successful in Hotel Chocolat Retail you will be first and foremost a great retailer, but you will also need to be curious, creative, challenging, and used to pace! We like to put each other on the spot. We think it’s exciting that way. With all this comes hard work, and all of the wonderful people in this business soon get used to it!
The challenge continues, with a growing UK estate and the opportunity to add the USA/Europe to the ‘Retail family’ I am looking forward to many more exciting challenges ahead.
