‘Honestly shocking, the treats aisle is for the wealthy folk now.’
This is just one of the observations Metro readers sent in response to a viral Instagram Story about the price of chocolate in British and Irish supermarkets.
‘That’s actually robbery,’ another replied to a photo of an €8.50 Kinder egg in a Dublin Tesco, while a third described the surging cost of sweets as ‘outrageous.’
Anger over the cost of living is nothing new, but recent months have seen rage over the rocketing price of chocolate reach new highs. ‘Are you taking the p***?’ asked TikToker Megzy, when he spotted Cadbury Oreo bars had gone up by 50p at his local shop. ‘UK prices have gone too far,’ he added.
Under another video about Freddos, oli_little_juju wrote: ‘Comes with a mortgage at this point.’ Chicken Shop Date host Amelia Dimoldenberg even referenced chocolate price hikes in a recent episode, calling it ‘sad’.
On X, Shanika_WM wrote: ‘Cost of living crisis is still out of control! How is a 90g bar of chocolate that used to be £1 now £1.50!!!?!
Another, halfofmyheart_0, said: ‘I hate that chocolate is so expensive now. As in ordinary chocolate???’
Chocolate has historically been recession-proof. In tough times, the downtrodden proletariat need sweet relief more than ever.
But it looks like these simplest of pleasures could be off the cards for many of us from now on, as the price of chocolate continues to soar to unprecedented levels.
The wholesale price of cocoa has seen a four-fold increase over the past year, with climate change being blamed for poor harvests in West Africa, where the majority of global producers are based.
Despite reduced supply, demand for chocolate is growing, resulting in prices peaking on the London Cocoa Futures in April at £9,648 a tonne.
This spike has been passed onto consumers, with Which? deeming chocolate prices the fastest rising of all food categories it researches — in a grim phenomenon dubbed ‘chocflation’.
Looking at the the nation’s favourite brand, Cadbury Dairy Milk, a standard size bar would have set you back 45p in the 90s. Nowadays, it’ll cost you upwards of £1.85.
Snickers and Mars bars set you back 25p before the millennium, and are now between 85p and £1, according to price comparison site Trolley.
And who could forget Freddo, which many joke is the canary in the coalmine of inflation. The iconic 18g chocolate frog was 10p for a long time, but now averages at 30p, a 200% increase since the halcyon days of the 90s.
While it’s not exactly a secret that things become more expensive over time, and an extra 20p here and there is hardly extortion, modern chocflation comes against a backdrop of decades-long wage stagnation, where people have less and less disposable cash.
And even though we’re still buying chocolate in our droves, it now costs more as a proportion of our earnings.
Currently, the average UK household spends 3.78% (£2.40) of its £63.50 a weekly food budget on chocolate. Compare this to 2001, when households spent £41.80 on food, 3.35% (£1.40) of which was on chocolate.
This is to do with something known as the ‘treat economy’, which you may have heard it referred to as the ‘lipstick effect’, after Leonard Lauder, chairman of Estée Lauder, claimed lipstick sales rose exponentially after the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
The idea is that people still tend to buy small luxury items even during an economic downturn, as cash-strapped consumers want to treat themselves to something that lets them forget their financial problems.
Why is chocolate so expensive right now?
There are a few reasons for the hikes, the first being warmer, drier weather across West Africa caused by the El Nino phenomenon of 2023. This resulted in in poor harvests in both Ghana and Ivory Coast, the world’s two biggest producers of cocoa beans, who are responsible for 70% of global supply.
Poor harvests and low yields were also attributed to the effects of crop disease and ageing cocoa plants, as rising costs of pesticides and fertilisers made it difficult for cocoa farmers to afford them, which increased the prevalence of pests and disease.
The cost of other raw materials like sugar has also increased, along with manufacturing overheads from energy to labour.
These issues are underscored by global events including Israel’s war on Gaza (for example, when the Houthi rebels attack commercial shipping in the Red Sea in reprisal, ships are forced to take longer routes) and new EU rules affecting European importing.
It tracks when it comes to our current situation too. A TikTok trend where creators claim ‘If there’s one thing I deserve, it’s a little treat’ has swept the platform, with thousands of videos tagged #LittleTreat and #LittleTreatCulture.
Additionally a recent survey by Barclaycard revealed 47% of people have continued to indulge in minor luxuries even while trying to cut back on other expenses.
So what happens if these minor luxuries become unattainable for certain people? Does the growing price of chocolate mean we risk some Willy Wonka world where the Charlie Buckets in society rarely get to enjoy sweets?
Chocolate isn’t exactly essential, but sometimes things that seem insignificant can be indicators of wider culture.
Sociologist Jean Baudrillard argued what we buy says a lot about who we are; within what he called a ‘hierarchy of consumers’, those who can afford the goods at the top of the status pyramid are viewed in higher standing.
Anne Murcott, a professor and author specialising in the sociology of food, agrees, telling Metro: ‘Broadly, the type of foods and drinks people take are associated with class and income.
‘In part that is related to price in relation to disposable income. In part it is also cultural, insofar as it is possible to identify “working class cultures” or “habits and conventions of upper class life”.’
What should big chocolate manufacturers do to keep prices down for consumers?
- Absorb the cost, keeping consumer prices the same
- Increase product prices to cover the cost
- Invest in alternative, cheaper ingredients
- Shrink the size of products but maintain price
Like most things, these price rises may just pass the upper middle classes by (perhaps because they don’t notice the difference as much or because they consume fewer ‘here and now’ foods than other) while those who are less well off have their limited budgets stretched further.
Marta Pizzetti, Associate Professor of Marketing at Emlyon Business School, tells Metro: ‘Even though it’s not a necessity, it’s something that might be hard for consumer to give up and not buy anymore. So it’s likely that we’ll make sacrifices to buy these kind of products – maybe in smaller quantities – but still, we’re going to buy it.’
The industry itself will also be impacted, but it’s small businesses rather than mega corporations who’ll struggle to keep up.
‘Big organisations have much more power in the market, because they buy in big quantities,’ Marta explains. ‘Small businesses and craft chocolate artisans, who buy in smaller quantities are much more subject to price increases.’
Pricing tactics explained
Price increase: When costs go up for manufacturers, some go for a traditional price increase.
We are often, as consumers, not happy with it,’ says Marta Pizzetti, Associate Professor of Marketing at Emylon Business School. ‘However, to a certain extent we can understand, because we understand the motivation behind this.’
Shrinkflation: Next is shrinkflation, which Marta describes as when they ‘maintain the same price, but reduce the quantity of the product.’
In her team’s research on the topic, they found ‘that actually consumers do prefer to pay more – rather than paying the same but having a lower quantity – because it’s seen as unfair and a misleading strategy.’
Skimpflation: Marta says this is ‘even more difficult to recognise, especially at the point of purchase’ than the previous example, and is when businesses ‘decrease the quality of the product while maintaining the same price.’
This could mean sneakily substituting certain, more expensive ingredients with cheaper alternatives — sometimes just water — to maximise profits.
Greedflation: This is sometimes referred to as ‘profit-led inflation’, but Isabella Weber of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, calls it ‘sellers’ inflation’, explaining it’s when large corporations ‘have used supply problems as an opportunity to increase prices and scoop windfall profits.’
Marta adds: ‘Basically, they’re taking advantage of the situation to increase the markup and increase their own profits at the expense of consumers.’
Alongside purchasing power due to bulk ordering, she says: ‘Big companies have multiple programs in the regions where cocoa beans are sourced to improve the living conditions of farmers — this gives them a kind of reciprocity relationship where they might be facilitated in negotiating prices, or even with governments.’
For small businesses to compete, they may be able to leverage a trend towards higher quality chocolate among the middle and upper classes, who feel compelled to spend more as long as they’re assured what they’re buying is ‘better’.
Marta says that brand ‘storytelling’ and underscoring ethical or environmentally-friendly practices can ‘increase the willingness to pay for consumers,’ and maintain sales.
In the mass market, the solution is more complicated. It’s unlikely prices will go down, but rises could be limited with effort from manufacturers and retailers.
Mars Wrigley Confectionery’s 2023 profits were up almost 100% on the previous year at £206.2 million, with its shareholders being paid £600 million in dividends. Similarly, Cadbury owner Mondelēz saw more than doubled net earnings at $4.96 billion (£3.9 billion), reporting its best year ever and paying shareholders a nearly $3 billion (£2.36 billion) during the first nine months of 2024 alone.
We can’t know their margins, but it stands to reason that these industry giants could consider absorbing some extra costs rather than passing them onto consumers.
Even if this isn’t feasible, greater transparency can help people make better purchasing decisions, ensuring at the very least they don’t feel misled by tactics like shrinkflation.
According to Marta, retailers are often left out of these debates, despite having ‘much more power’ than consumers to change things.
European supermarket Carrefour, for example, began communicating product quality or size changes to consumers, which led to laws being passed in France and Italy requiring this information be made available to shoppers.
Whether companies will embrace this across the board remains to be seen. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look that likely.
The CEO of US snack food firm Hostess admitted in 2022 that rising prices across the economy ‘helps’ profit because they can raise prices to levels that exceed their increased costs. More recently, Nestle executives said that although it plans to curb huge increases going forward, they’ll continue ‘commensurate with what the consumer can take’.
Perhaps our golden ticket is to show the industry what we won’t take and stop putting our money where our mouths are — it’d be easy enough, if it wasn’t for thatrelentless sweet tooth.
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