Personal Finance
Soaring cocoa prices are bad news for those Valentine’s Day chocolate purchases
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Sorry, lovebirds, but that chocolate you’re buying for your sweetie this Valentine’s Day probably comes with a bigger price tag.
Candy is the most popular Valentine’s Day gift, beating out other tokens of affection like flowers, cards and jewelry, according to the National Retail Federation. Additionally, chocolate accounts for more than half of all confectionery sales, according to the National Confectioners Association, a trade group.
But chocolate makers have been raising prices to offset record costs for cocoa, company officials and agricultural economists said.
Consumers will likely pay about 10% to 20% more for chocolate this Valentine’s Day than they did last year, said David Branch, a commodities analyst at the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute.
“It’s a significant increase,” Branch said.
For example, the price of a king-size two-pack of Reese’s hearts increased by 13% from February 2024 to February 2025, to $2.59 from $2.29, according to Retail Brew. Meanwhile, the price of a 10.8-ounce bag of milk chocolate Hershey’s Kisses rose to $5.49 today from $4.89 in January 2024, a 12% increase, according to Retail Brew.
The current retail price for U.S. chocolate ranges from $3.08 to $5.72 per pound, according to Selina Wamucii, which conducts agriculture market research.
Cocoa prices ‘skyrocketed’
Cocoa is a key ingredient in chocolate: in fact it must be present to be legally described as chocolate.
West Africa — predominantly Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana — account for about 80% of world cocoa production, according to a recent JPMorgan research note.
Disease pressures, climate change and bad weather “ravaged” crops in West Africa, fueling a global cocoa shortage that has persisted since early 2024, JPMorgan said.
Cocoa prices “skyrocketed” as its availability hit historic lows, according to JPMorgan.
Global cocoa prices hit a record high on Dec. 18, when they neared $13,000 per metric ton, said Branch of the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute.
That’s significantly above where price levels were at the start of 2024. The average cocoa price in December — $10,846 per metric ton — was up more than 140% from the roughly $4,500 average in January 2024, Branch said.
“It’s really driven by three years of horrific weather” in West Africa, Branch said. Rainfall has been above the historic average followed by longer-than-usual dry seasons, which stress cocoa production, he added.
The cocoa supply deficit — the difference between what buyers want and what’s available — rose to 478,000 metric tons last year, the highest deficit in 60 years, Branch said.
Chocolate inflation is ‘unprecedented’
The rising cocoa prices have pressured profits for chocolate makers, leading them to raise prices for customers, experts said.
Hershey, for example, recently alluded to high cocoa prices when forecasting lower-than-expected company profits for 2025.
“Offsetting the high cocoa costs forced the Group to adjust its pricing, which will be further required in 2025,” the Lindt & Sprüngli Group, a Swiss chocolatier, said in a January release about 2024 sales results.
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The average wholesale price for chocolate and confectionery products swelled by more than 30% in January 2025 from January 2024 — a roughly fivefold increase in the inflation rate from 12 months before, according to the producer price index.
“We see the chocolate market set for inflation largely unprecedented in recent history,” Celine Pannuti, head of European staples and beverages at JPMorgan, said in the research note.
Chocolate prices in 2025 paid by consumers will likely accelerate by a double-digit percentage in the low teens, Pannuti said.
Officials at other major chocolatiers including Mondelez and Barry Callebaut alluded to a probable need for additional price hikes this year.
“The recent [cocoa] bean price spike means that further pricing will be taken in the chocolate market,” Peter Vanneste, chief financial officer of Barry Callebaut, said in a January call with analysts.
However, higher prices have also pressured consumer demand, Vanneste said.
As of mid-January, Q4 2024 data on cocoa grindings showed a year-on-year decline, “an indicator that cocoa demand is plummeting,” according to the International Cocoa Organization.
Consumers purchased $21.4 billion of chocolate during the year ended Aug. 11, 2024, up 1.5% from the prior year, according to the most recent data available from the National Confectioners Association. But sales volume declined by 3% over that period, even as the retail dollar value of those sales rose, the data shows.
The data signals consumers are paying more and buying less, Branch said.
“The market is kind of in turmoil, and will pretty much stay that way for this [cocoa] season,” he said.
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