A husband and wife team are back in charge of the luxury chocolate brand they launched after spearheading a bid to buy it back from its private equity owner.
Montezuma’s, which is stocked in high-end retailers such as Whole Foods and John Lewis, was recently put up for sale by Scottish investment firm Inverleith, which wanted to offload it quickly.
A deal to sell Montezuma’s to Paramount Retail Group was struck last week. Paramount has appointed the chocolate brand’s founders Helen and Simon Pattinson to run the business, five years after they cashed out.
They founded Montezuma’s in 2000 and built a reputation selling exotic flavours such as orange and geranium and hot pickle. Inverleith bought the brand in 2018 but it has been lossmaking ever since.
The Pattinsons said they want to ‘quickly restore the company to its former glory’.
Luxury: Montezuma’s is stocked in high-end retailers such as Whole Foods and John Lewis
But Montezuma’s is the latest Inverleith-owned company to change ownership in recent months, as the firm’s portfolio of high-end consumer brands has shrunk dramatically. The Mail on Sunday can reveal Inverleith has backed out of four of its seven companies in the last three months, either selling or placing them into administration.
Times have been tough for luxury retailers in the UK, including rivals such as Hotel Chocolat, as customers have cut back on spending after the pandemic. Inverleith oversaw the administrations of online butcher Farmison and grocery chain Planet Organic in April.
Farmison, which counted Fortnum & Mason among its customers, was rescued by former Asda chief executive Andy Clarke. Planet Organic was bought out by a consortium led by founder Renee Elliott.
An Inverleith spokesman said: ‘We are disappointed at having to sell Montezuma’s, Farmison and Planet Organic at this time. However, the combination of the war in Ukraine, Covid and Brexit have created particularly challenging conditions for small food and drink companies for both trading and funding.’
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