March 2008

Consumers are fast becoming chocolate connoisseurs and dismiss the chocolate in today’s Easter eggs as too ‘cheap’ tasting. A whopping 70% of women prefer quality to quantity when it comes to chocolate, according to recent research carried out for Hotel Chocolat.

Most consumers now expect at least a 30% minimum cocoa solid content from their milk chocolate. It’s not surprising that men have also become chocolate gourmands with 35% complaining that cheap Easter chocolate spoils their enjoyment of this period.

Nearly half of the egg guzzlers working in HR are most likely to be put off by a cheap egg as opposed to only one in five of financiers. Unsurprisingly, it is architects who pay most attention to egg structure with one in every four asked dismissive that the chocolate on an average Easter egg is too thin.

“Nowadays people expect the same quality of taste from their Easter eggs as they would from other chocolate products” egg-splains Angus Thirwell, Co-founder of Hotel Chocolat “that’s why our Easter collection contains delights such as The Serious Dark fix Egg with 72% dark chocolate and our original Extra Thick Egg range is more than 3 times as thick than the average Easter egg – we take chocolate very seriously”