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Pros
Personalise every aspect, variety of styles of chocolate, flexible prices, choice of how often to get a delivery
Cons
Smaller subscriptions are less good value for money, some categories currently have less choice

What is the Hotel Chocolat Build-a-Box subscription?

This subscription from Hotel Chocolat offers a chance to curate your ultimate chocolate selection and have it delivered each month. Pick the size of the box, the type of chocolates inside and the exact flavours you want. There are three sizes of box to choose from, with value for money increasing with size: the ‘For Me’ box is £25, while the largest ‘For Sharing’ box is £45 but offers a 15% saving compared to buying the products individually.

What's in the subscription?

As the name suggests, the contents of the subscription depend entirely on your choices.

First, pick your size: we chose the ‘For us’ option, which is the medium size offering for £35. Within this, there are 3 more options offering different combinations of Hotel Chocolat products – combining everything from chocolate slabs and truffles to biscuits, macarons and batons. One option that includes a 500ml bottle of alcohol (take your pick from different chocolate cream liqueurs or flavoured gins) seemed particularly good value. Our ‘All about icons’ box included seven items: two boxes of macarons, two chocolate batons and three selectors (truffles or chocolate slabs).

Next up, the fun part: choosing the flavours of each product in your box. For example, our subscription included three boxes of ‘selectors’, which offered a huge range of 50 different chocolate slabs or truffles to choose from. We did notice that for some product types there was less choice – if you choose a box that includes biscuits there is currently only one flavour on offer.

The final step is choosing your frequency of subscription: get the box delivered every one, two or three months. You can change your choices and frequency of delivery at any time.

Our subscription arrived in a smart black box tied with a Hotel Chocolat ribbon and it felt like an indulgent treat to unwrap. Some of the products we’d chosen because we knew we loved them (the mint macarons are our top tip and dangerously moreish), while others, such as the orange batons with crunchy wafer pieces or the floral rose and violet fondants, were new discoveries we’d been looking forward to trying. The fun variety of products and individual packaging makes them perfect for storing away and bringing out any time you crave a treat.

Conclusion

This would make a great gift – you could fill it with a variety of salted caramel items for a caramel fan, or go for boozy chocs or all-dark chocolate for someone with a grown-up palate. But it’s a perfect treat for yourself, too. The smallest ‘For Me’ box still contains a minimum of three items for a sweet pick-me-up and it’s a fun way to discover new Hotel Chocolat favourites each month, although the value for money definitely improves with the larger boxes.