What makes chocolates at bedtime so enticing and why some hotels are going a step further
- Pillow chocolates are often cited as one of guests’ favourite things, but many of the best hotels have moved on to other amenities
- Establishing a connection with the local area is a common strategy, such as gifts that introduce a country’s culture
Supposedly it was Hollywood hunk Cary Grant who started it all. Some time in the early 1950s the Anglo-American actor arranged a rendezvous with a woman in a suite at the Mayfair Hotel in St Louis, Missouri, in the United States. Knowing she would arrive first, he asked the hotel to place a trail of chocolates that would lead his guest from the sitting room into the bedroom, and to the pillow, where she would find a note from him.
The contents of the note, the name of the woman, and whether the seduction was successful are unknown. But the manager of the hotel, hearing of this escapade, ordered chocolates to be placed on pillows at turndown time. Other hotels copied his initiative, still others copied those, and the rest is history – presumably one of increased business for dentists worldwide.
The modern owners of the dignified St Louis pile that is now the Magnolia Hotel continue the pillow chocolate tradition, and not only in the top-floor Cary Grant suite.
So far, so dreamily romantic – chocolate and seduction being widely connected in the popular imagination, and confectionery the Valentine’s Day gift of choice. But heartthrob Grant, some other part of his anatomy throbbing for the unknown woman, was still married to wife number three, actress and author Betsy Drake. By 1958 Grant and Drake had separated, and in 1962, they divorced.
Despite this story’s bitter aftertaste, bedtime confectionery remains commonplace from grand hotel to guest house, though its origin is largely unknown to managements and guests.
So why do it? A calorie-laden snack of fats and sugars just before bedtime hardly seems a good idea. But even if the idea of a pillow chocolate is hard to swallow, it is more frequently praised by guests than any other aspect of their stay, hotel managers have found. The benefit is great for the small cost incurred.