Luxury hot chocolate cafe serving twenty different flavours to open in Manchester

A new luxury hot chocolate store serving up hot drinks and sweet treats will be opening its doors in Manchester later this year.

Knoops, which brands itself as a purveyor of 'expertly crafted chocolate drinks', will open in the heart of Manchester city centre on the corner of Cross Street and South King Street. It will be the tenth site for the chocolate concept, and the first Northern branch for the brand, which is mainly concentrated in the south of England.

Knoops, which was founded by German-born Jens Knoop in Rye, East Sussex, in 2013, specialises in hot chocolate, with a menu of 20 different chocolates on offer. It currently runs eight venues in the UK, with several London-based sites, as well as Brighton, Oxford and Cambridge.

Read more: Queues out the door as first Gail's Bakery opens in Wilmslow - and Manchester gets one next

As well as a Manchester site, Knoops will be opening stores in Knightsbridge and Bath, as part of its strategy to 'do for chocolate drinks what Starbucks did for coffee'. They're also planning on opening 100 new UK stories in the next five years.

A spokesperson for Knoops told Big Hospitality: "Seeing a new face light up as they discover our brand will never get old, and opening up in new locations across the UK is helping us to spread the message of Knoopology at a phenomenal rate.

"We're creating a lasting impression in our current locations and already have many Mancunian fans of the brand from visits to other stores. Likewise, our products are already stocked in Harrods, so it's fantastic to enhance our presence in Knightsbridge too."

Menus at Knoops list the percentages of the chocolate, from 28 percent white to 44 percent milk all the way up to 70 percent dark and 100 percent extra