It’s time for instalment 4 of our retailtainment week! So far we’ve seen the fun that fashion and toys have had with their stores and now on to what could possibly be the most exciting of all…chocolate!
M&M world in London’s Leicester square features four interactive floors of fun, excitement and of course, chocolate. As the first interactive store dedicated to a confectionary brand in the UK (excluding of course the Willy Wonker-esque Cadbury World), it’s a pretty special place to be.
The whole store is like one big tasting session. Large crowds build around each attraction in the store on a daily basis; including the big blue M&M character, in the driver’s seat of a silver Aston Martin, whom you can have your picture taken with.
The £10m Mecca is the most recent instalment of all the M&M worlds, with the first 3 all being in the US. The first of the four was launched in Las Vegas in 1997. The four storey shrine features a gift shop, 3D movie theatre, and a replica of the M&M race car featured in the US’s NASCAR Sprint Cup. As awesome as these attractions all are, the show stopper has got to be the display of M&M’s themselves. In nearly every colour, M&M’s are displayed along a huge wall ironically called the ‘My Colour’ wall.
The New York store was created in 2006, inside a three level glass box in Times Square. New York’s largest confectionary store features a 50-foot, 2-storey high Wall of Chocolate made up of 72 continuous M&M’s filled tubes. In the same year, the Orlando store was named ‘International Store of the Year’ by Visual Merchandising & Store Design Magazine.
Although the previous three Worlds’ are monstrous mansions hidden with treats, they have nothing on the 35,000 square foot London manor; the worlds largest confectionary store!
As exciting as chocolate can be, not every visitor that goes through the door can be there to buy the product? After all, with a 50ft wall of chocolate, 3D M&M’s Nascar model or M&M’s London bus, wouldn’t you want to take a peak? As Peter Cross, one half of the Yellow Door management team, said “Why would you just not go somewhere that just gives you joy?”
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