The price of chocolate might make you feel bitter about buying sweet treats.
Rather than filling trick-or-treat buckets with chocolate bars galore, children are going to be coming home with gummies and more fruity and tart treats.
Cocoa prices are soaring, causing companies to shift gears away from chocolate sweets this candy-centric season.
“We’re going to see a lot of new creations — Halloween treats in the gummy and Twizzler theme and other kinds of non-chocolate confections — hitting stores to capture that sales growth at a lower price point,” David Branch, a commodities analyst for Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute, told the Washington Post.
And while chocolate still sits on top of the sweets category, people are showing greater interest in gummy, fruity and sour candies, Sally Lyons Wyatt, chief advisor of consumer packaged goods at Circana, shared with the outlet.
Mars, the candy giant that produces brands such as Skittles and M&M’s, told CNN that it has expanded their fruity candy and gummy options for Halloween thanks to an increase in interest from Gen Z and younger consumers.
“Consumers are buying less than what they may have in the past, but chocolate is still a top-selling category,” Lyons Wyatt said. “Halloween will still have chocolate showing up at consumers’ doors.”
These candy options may offer more flavors and variety than chocolate, but it’s also cheaper.
Cocoa prices have more than doubled since the start of the year and are staying at their high prices due to three years of poor cocoa harvests, with a fourth expected, as major African cocoa plants in Ivory Coast and Ghana have either stopped or cut processing because they can’t afford to buy beans. The cocoa-producing regions of West Africa produce over 70% of global cocoa supply.
“Cocoa is not like a normal agriculture crop where you have it grown everywhere, like other commodities. It takes 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 was just one forced to come to terms with the surging prices: Heshey’s president Michele Buck said in a call in August that cocoa prices are “not sustainable” — though the company told CNN that the price hike won’t change their Halloween items this year.
In August, Hershey reported an operating profit of $287.8 million — a decrease of 48.7% from the previous year.
However, with the weather improving, prices for chocolate are looking up — or down, rather — with experts predicting that prices will eventually come down, but not until at least September 2025, in time for Halloween next year.
“So far we’re having really decent weather for this year’s crop,” Branch shared. “It will start helping to boost supply, so that’s why we expect that the prices will come down.”
Chocolate companies are trying to get around the obstacle in the meantime so chocolate isn’t completely unaffordable, including making products smaller or altering the overall flavor by replacing a layer of chocolate with another flavor or texture, like a wafer, nuts or filling.
“There is probably some shrinkflation in these bags,” Branch said. “You get a two-pound bag of a mixture of all these different candies from a company. Well, that bag is probably going down to be less than two pounds now at the same price point.”
Lyons Wyatt added, “There have been (products) that might be filled with something in addition to being encased in chocolate because then you don’t need to have as much chocolate to make that product.”
Though with prices not looking to decrease until late 2025, retailers, manufacturers and consumers are all sure to feel the effects.
“The main role that candy plays is treating and rewarding,” Lyons Wyatt told WaPo. “[But] price has been one of the biggest deterrents.”
