Overindulgence is the order of the day at Easter – and chocolate the main focus of our feasting. As a new Hotel Chocolat cafe opens in Sunderland, Sarah Millington talks to Angus Thirlwell, one of the company's North-East founders, a real-life Willy Wonka

ANGUS THIRLWELL describes some of the offerings at the new Hotel Chocolat cafe in The Bridges shopping centre, in Sunderland. They sound delectable – along with the conventional (Classic Chocolate, Vanilla White Chocolat and Mint Chocolat are among the drinks) there’s the grandiosely-titled Ice Cream of the Gods (cocoa-infused cream) and the trademark Cocoa Whip (hot chocolate topped with cocoa whipped cream – for those who just can’t get enough chocolate.)

As CEO and co-founder of the company, Angus is something of a zealot – cliched as it is, you can’t help thinking of Willy Wonka. He doesn’t mind the comparison. In fact, he welcomes it. “It’s one of my favourite books,” he cheerfully admits when, towards the end of the interview, I tentatively raise the subject of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. “The story is so powerful. It just shows what happens when you make the right chocolate and you’re transported into this world of ideas. The possibilities are endless. I’m really grateful to Willy Wonka for planting that idea.”

Since the first Hotel Chocolat shop opened in North London in 2004, selling chocolate with the mantra “More Cocoa, Less Sugar” the company’s rise has been meteoric. Building on the fundamental tenets of originality, authenticity and ethics, it sought to bring new and exciting products to UK palates dulled by an abundance of overly-sweet confectionary.

The formula worked – in less than 15 years, Hotel Chocolat has established 93 shops, more than 20 cafes, four restaurants, a Caribbean cocoa plantation and a hotel. Then there are Schools of Chocolate, a Tasting Club, Chocolate Bonds and even a cookery book. Angus laughs at what seems an insane level of activity.

“I think it’s probably cocoa over-stimulating us and giving us too much energy,” he says. “The way we look at the world is through the eyes of a cocoa grower, so when we think about what we should be doing, we’re thinking about the cocoa bean and its possibilities. What we know is that our customers love experiences – they love coming to stay at the hotel in St Lucia, they love coming to the restaurant in Borough Market. We put on events and experiences that go beyond opening the lid of a box of chocolates.”

Born in Newcastle, Angus lived in West Boldon until the age of three, when his father Edwin, one of the first directors of Mr Whippy ice-cream, was asked to take over operations in Barbados. The family returned to the UK when Angus was eight, living first in Houghton-le-Spring, then North Yorkshire, as Edwin established the Darlington-headquartered printers, Prontaprint.

Now in his 80s, Edwin has returned to running his old ice-cream business in Barbados and Angus says he’s an inspiration. “You can’t help being indoctrinated by it when you’re a boy and your dad makes business sound interesting and fun. It definitely had a big effect. Now he’s gone back to live in Barbados, he’s slightly amazed me because he’s building a new ice-cream factory.”

Angus co-founded Hotel Chocolat with Peter Harris, whose family, coincidentally, is from Sunderland. The two met in Cambridge when Angus went to work for Peter. “A long time ago Peter hired me to come and work in a high-tech company that he’d set up,” he says. “My job was to do all the international marketing. Peter and I enjoyed working together so much that we decided to leave and set up our own company, which became Hotel Chocolat.”

Was it their heads or their hearts that pulled them in the direction of chocolate? Angus says a bit of both. “The thing about chocolate is that it’s just so seductive as an area of work. You can be very creative with chocolate – the taste and the appearance – and you can have a lot of fun with it as well. It sucked us right in – so much so that we became really obsessed with the cocoa bean and got into growing as well.

“Chocolate is very alluring. The thing about it is you can either go the boring route, which is using the same moulds as other chocolatiers, or say to yourself that chocolate is sculpture. We decided to take that route, which is more and more expensive, but ultimately it means that we can express something that’s more exciting.”

It’s claimed on Hotel Chocolat’s website that Angus eats chocolate “religiously, every day”. He insists it’s true – and says it serves three distinct purposes: enjoyment, research and performance-enhancement. “I like to have chocolate when I really need to concentrate or before and after sport,” he explains. “It’s always high cocoa content.

“The main drive is the superpower of cocoa. The way the body reacts with it is at the level that we would call it a superfood – and pure cocoa is officially a superfood. It’s a stimulant, but it’s not a jagged one like caffeine can be. The Mayans used to carry cocoa beans around with them and munch on them.”

The other dimension, he says, is the spiritual aspect of cocoa. “There’s no doubt that it has the properties of making people feel happier, and that’s about stimulating the serotonin in the brain. When you combine the physical and the spiritual benefits you think, wow, this is unlike any other foodstuff – and it tastes delicious as well. I think that’s why chocolate has such a place in people’s hearts and imaginations.”

On the “Hotel” point (one of the most Frequently Asked Questions must be, is there actually a hotel?) Angus admits that, though there is now – the luxury Boucan on the Rabot Estate plantation – it was an afterthought. “When I was telling everybody in the company that we were going to be called Hotel Chocolat their first question was, does that mean we’re actually going to have a hotel? and I said, absolutely not,” he says. “At that point it was definitely not part of the business plan. We wanted to evoke in people’s minds a place of escape that they could go to. We wanted to unleash that feeling.”

The hotel came about when the pair decided they wanted to become cocoa growers. “We thought, we have to bring our customers here,” says Angus. “We realised that was going to entail creating a hotel. I think we’d had a few too many rums one night and in the morning, we seemed to have a business plan to design and build the hotel.”

And the use of the French word, rather than the, admittedly more prosaic, “Chocolate”? “I lived in France for a couple of years and I thought it was the definitive name to describe the stuff,” Angus says simply.

The thing that strikes you is that whatever he does, whether it be building a hotel or coming up with innovations like Supermilk, an unusual high-milk/high cocoa blend of chocolate, he’s not afraid to push the boundaries. Like Willy Wonka, he’s enjoying himself too much to care what anyone else thinks – in the interview, he uses the word “fun” four times. If there’s a best job in the world, this might well be it. “My job is to make people happy,” says Angus. “It doesn’t get any better than that.”