The price of chocolate may make you feel bitter about buying sweet things.
Instead of filling trick-or-treat buckets with copious amounts of chocolate bars, kids are coming home with gummies and more fruits and tangy sweets.
cocoa prices are risingDue to which companies are getting worried stay away from chocolate sweets This candy-centric season.
“We’re going to see a lot of new creations – Halloween treats in gummy and Twizzler themes and other types of non-chocolate confections – arriving at stores to capture sales growth at lower prices,” said commodity analyst David Branch. Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute, told the Washington Post,
And while chocolate still tops the sweets category, people are showing more interest in gummy, fruity and sour candies, Sally Lyons Wyatt, chief advisor for consumer packaged goods at Circana, shared with the outlet.
Mars, the candy giant that makes brands like Skittles and M&M’s, told CNN It has expanded its fruity candy and gummy options for Halloween due to increased interest from Gen Z and younger consumers.
“Consumers are buying less than before, but chocolate is still the best-selling category,” Lyons Wyatt said. “Halloween will still see chocolate arriving at consumers’ doorsteps.”
These candy alternatives can offer more flavor and variety than chocolate, But it’s also cheap,
Cocoa prices have more than doubled since the beginning of the year and remain at their highest for three years bad cocoa cropWith a fourth expected, major African cocoa plants in Ivory Coast and Ghana have either stopped processing or cut back because they cannot afford to buy the beans. The cocoa producing regions of West Africa produce more than 70% of global production Cocoa supply.
“Cocoa is not like a typical agricultural crop where you grow it everywhere like other commodities. “It requires a very specific site and temperature range to grow,” David Branch, sector manager at Wells Fargo’s Agri-Food Institute, told CNN.
Leading chocolate company Hershey has been forced to compromise with rising prices: Hershey President Michelle Buck said in a call in August that cocoa prices are “not sustainable” — though the company told CNN that rising prices would There will be no change in their prices. Halloween item this year.
In August, Hershey reported an operating profit of $287.8 million – down 48.7% from the previous year.
Although chocolate prices may be looking up or down as the weather improves, experts predict prices will eventually drop, but not until at least September 2025, in time for Halloween next year.
“So far we’re having really good weather for this year’s crop,” Branch shared. “This will help increase supply, so we expect prices to go down.”
Chocolate companies meanwhile are trying to overcome the barrier so that chocolate is not completely unpalatable, including making products smaller or changing the overall flavor by replacing a layer of chocolate with another flavor or texture, such as a wafer, nuts or a filling. involves changing the.
“There’s probably some shrinkage inflation in these bags,” Branch said. “You get a two-pound bag of a mixture of all these different candies from one company. Well, that bag would probably now be less than two pounds at the same price.
“There have been (products) that can be filled with something other than encased in chocolate because then you don’t need as much chocolate to make that product,” Lyons Wyatt said.
Although prices are not expected to subside until the end of 2025, retailers, manufacturers and consumers are sure to feel the impact.
“The main role that candy plays is healing and rewarding,” Lyons Wyatt told WaPo. ,[But] “Cost has been one of the biggest barriers.”
