How Chococo is operating through Lockdown #2
Co-founder Claire here with an update: Here we are again coping with a full lockdown which is not something we wanted just before our peak Christmas period, but we understand the sad rationale behind it. Before I outline our measures, I just want to say on behalf of the team, a huge THANKYOU to all our customers, both online & in our stores, for your amazing support so far this year and into this new reality for us all. This is a summary of how we are handling this latest challenge to hopefully ensure that we can keep supplying you with our award-winning fine chocolates to lift spirits in this second lockdown:
Our Chococo HQ in Wareham:
We will continue to make, pack and despatch our chocolates from our chocolate kitchen in Wareham in Dorset. The team are already working in shift patterns to reduce the number of people on site at any one time, wear visors and regularly wash hands and have been doing so for a long time now. This means that as a manufacturer, we will continue to operate our nationwide online mail order service and also Click/Call & Collect services for customers wishing to collect chocolates from their local chocolate house.
Online:
Our online service will continue as normal, so you can order 24/7 on this site and we will endeavour to despatch your items as quickly as possible after receipt to give them time to get to you. We would appreciate it if you could order earlier than you might normally do so for Christmas as, whilst the Royal Mail delivery service is operating normally currently, they may get overwhelmed closer to Christmas.
Most of our items are available to deliver to you now, there are only a few items that you can pre-order now which we will deliver closer to Christmas as they contain fresh chocolates with a short shelf life.
We will be offering free standard delivery on all orders of £45+ from November 4th.
Our Chocolate Houses:
From November 9th, our Exeter Chocolate House is closed until the end of lockdown, due to lack of footfall for takeaways or orders for collection making it completely uneconomic to keep open. Our other chocolate houses are open open for limited cafe takeaway sales only. We offer hot and cold drinks (don't forget to bring your reusable cup as we can offer contactless hot drinks to go) plus our most popular cakes & bakes. Our opening times in all stores have been updated as of November 9th too. Any future changes will be flagged on our social media channels & on the page for the relevant chocolate house.
Whilst our shops within our chocolate houses will be closed, customers will also be able to visit to collect pre-ordered items which they can order in the following way:
Click & Collect- this service is now available on this site for most chocolate items which our chocolate houses also stock and you choose the click & collect option at the checkout. Some items are therefore excluded includng hampers, treats bundles, chocolate biscuit cakes and brownie baking kits but all are clearly flagged as not being available for click & collect. Items will be available 48 hours after you place your order (excluding Sundays). We will also be offering our new 425ml take home gelato tubs as a click & collect only item - we cannot post those!
Call & Collect - If you don't want to use our online click & collect service, you can call each Chocolate House directly to place & pay for your order over the phone. The team will confirm they have the item(s) you want in stock and agree a collection date & time with you at the time of ordering. Please see the relevant Chocolate Houses page on this site for the telephone number for each chocolate house. Please leave a message with a contact phone number if they do not answer and they will get back to you as soon as they can. Please do not call us at Chococo HQ for this service as we cannot take call & collect orders, this has to be done direct with the store you want to collect from.
Local Delivery - this service is available from our Swanage Chocolate House ONLY. Please call the Swanage chocolate house direct to place and pay for your order as for a call & collect and agree a delivery window with the team. It will be either me or Andy to be your delivery driver!
We hope that these additional services will help offset any inconvenience caused by not being able to shop as normal in this pre-Christmas period. The skeleton crews who will be manning the coffee machine and phone in each of our chocolate houses look forward to welcoming you for (very speedy) safe visits.
Take care everyone, look after yourselves and keep your distance!
Virtual chocolate hugs,
Claire, on behalf of all the team x