Hotel Chocolat triumphs in chocolate dispute with Waitrose

Hotel Chocolat is claiming victory in its bitter chocolate dispute with Waitrose, after the supermarket agreed to stop making bars that the confectioner claimed were copycats of its own.

The chocolatier’s co-founder Angus Thirlwell said talks had yielded a truce that he hoped to seal with Waitrose’s managing director, Rob Collins, over a cup of cocoa.

The move follows plagiarism accusations from Hotel Chocolat, which claimed a new range of Waitrose chocolate bars was copied from its trademark slabs.

“We’ve been in discussions with Waitrose for a few days and managed to get to a position we’re happy with,” said Thirlwell. “They’ve agreed to stop making the totally coincidentally very similar bars.”

He said Hotel Chocolat was allowing Waitrose a few weeks to sell the rest of its stock, rather than asking that they be destroyed, to avoid food waste.

“In our view, it’s a victorious solution to the whole thing,” said Thirlwell. “We asked them to do the right thing and to their credit we’ve got what we want.”

He said he had invited Collins for a cup of cocoa to discuss how to avoid similar disputes in future.

During the row, Hotel Chocolat declared a chocolate “amnesty”, offering anyone who had bought a £2 Waitrose bar the chance to exchange it for one of the chocolatier’s own, which usually sell for £3.95. Thirlwell said the amnesty would be extended until Waitrose had finished selling off its stock of the bars.

A Waitrose spokesperson said: “While we are confident that we’ve not infringed any of Hotel Chocolat’s designs, it is not in our interest to enter into a protracted legal dispute with Hotel Chocolat, and so we have decided not to restock this product once the existing chocolate bars have sold.”

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