Whether it’s a favourite bar, biscuit or indulgent hot drink, feeding a chocolate habit costs more than it used to.
The price of the chocolate on shop shelves climbed by 15.4% in the year to August, according to the latest cost of living snapshot.
Although other price moves meant overall UK inflation was unchanged at 3.8% last month, chocolate was a big riser. Alongside hikes for beef, butter and coffee, it helped propel food price inflation back over 5% for the first time in 18 months.
At £30 a go, the luxury 1kg jars of giant chocolate buttons sold by gifting brand Cocoba were a casualty of a soaring cocoa price, explains the company’s founder Darren Litton.
With cocoa prices more than doubling over the past two years as a result of poor harvests in west Africa, including Ghana and Ivory Coast, even something aimed at gift buyers was being priced off the shelf.
“We delisted them for a while because we couldn’t even sell them at £40 with the price of everything involved,” Litton says.
Cocoa now commands about $7,800 (£5,700) per tonne on international commodities markets from below $3,500 (£2,600) two years ago. The price peaked at more than $12,000 (£8,800) at the end of 2024.
The easing price means Cocoba is bringing the jars of giant buttons back for Christmas, but even at £40 Litton says it’s a challenge to make the numbers add up.
“The cocoa price is still at a very, very high level but seems to be settling down a bit,” he adds. “We make everything at our factory in Kent. We’ve had to increase prices and invest in equipment to improve efficiency.”
Cocoba is a minnow in a market dominated by big names such as Nestlé and Mars but surging ingredient costs have hurt them too. Mondelēz, which owns Cadbury, expects annual profits to fall 10% owing to higher cocoa prices.
The squeeze has triggered numerous rounds of shrinkflation, with the Guardian recently revealing that tubs of Quality Street and Celebrations and even some Toblerone bars have shrunk ahead of Christmas.
Not much gets past cash-strapped shoppers, who have also raised eyebrows on discovering a KitKat nine-pack is now an eight-pack, and a multipack of Freddos contains four not five chocolates.
Alex Lawrence, a retail expert at data company Circana, says higher ingredient costs are being passed on to the consumer. “If you look at the average price per kg for chocolate confectionery it’s up 27% over the last two years, and 12% in the last year.”
Britons spent £5.9bn on chocolate in stores in the year to 9 August. Although that figure was up 10%, they actually physically took home less in their baskets.
“The quantity we are buying is down 2% year-on-year,” says Lawrence. “People are definitely pulling back in terms of their consumption.”
Shop price data compiled for the Guardian reveals the extent of increases over the past two years, with favourites such as Cadbury Dairy Milk or Galaxy costing about 30% more than in 2023.
A 110g bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk now costs £1.84 on average, which works out at 42p more than in 2023, according to the price analysts Assosia. The equivalent Galaxy bar has gone up by the same amount to £1.79. The data is based on the average pre-promotion price across Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons.
The big companies all say the same thing when asked about pack size reductions and price increases. Earlier this month a spokesperson for Mondelēz told the Guardian it continued to experience “significantly higher input costs across our supply chain”, with ingredients such as cocoa and dairy costing far more than they had done previously.
“Meanwhile, other costs, such as energy and transport, also remain high. This means that our products continue to be much more expensive to make.”
On the high street, the upmarket Knoops chain sells posh hot chocolates graded by cocoa percentage, with prices starting at £4 for a drink made with a 28% single-origin Colombian chocolate.
“It’s been a wild ride for cocoa prices,” says company founder Jens Knoop. It is not just cocoa, he adds that the chain’s matcha bill increased 53% this month.
“While there have been increases in our per kilo chocolate price … we have only passed on a small percentage of that to our customers in their chocolate drinks,” says Knoop.
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But while you might treat yourself to Knoops’ most expensive brew – a limited edition 68% single-origin Madagascan chocolate costing £7.90 – on a day out, in the supermarket consumers balk at tubs of instant hot chocolate costing north of a fiver.
The price of a 220g jar of Options is up 20% over two years at £5.40, according to Assosia, prompting shoppers to take to supermarket websites to complain. “This is a good product,” writes one. “It used to be reasonably priced £3-£4 Now it is £5.40!!!!”
In a similar vein, at £4.50 a 500g tub of Cadbury hot chocolate costs a fifth more than it did in 2023.
Shoppers also complain that other price changes take the biscuit. At £2.25, a 266g pack of McVitie’s milk chocolate digestives costs 35p more than two years ago. Meanwhile a 130g pack of Fox’s milk chocolatey rounds is now £2.30. The same pack cost £1.87 two years ago.
The increases are also notable on supermarket own-label chocolate digestives – which provide a cheaper alternative to the big brands – with a 300g pack now £1.12, up from 85p two years ago.
Food and drink inflation could hit 5.7% by the end of year, up from August’s reading of 5.1%, according to the Food and Drink Federation.
Karen Betts, the trade body’s chief executive, says rising food prices were previously down to energy and commodity shocks, but now government policies – such as April’s increase in employers’ national insurance contributions – were a driver.
“The costs are such that companies can no longer absorb them and are having to pass at least some of them on to consumers.”
Needless to say it’s a difficult environment for small companies such as Temprd, which makes “properly chunky” chocolate bars, in flavours such as lemon and blueberry cheesecake.
When Rob Anthony started the Essex company with his brother five years ago he was aware that its premium bars looked expensive compared to “run of the mill” chocolate. “At that time our bars were probably around £3 per 100g. Now they are £4.50.
“We had to make two jumps, from £3 to £3.75 and then to £4.50, so two price rises in the last four years,” he says, but is hopeful the worst is over.
“There might be a [cocoa] surplus this year, because demand has fallen, and production has been quite good. We’re fairly confident we can survive through from now to next Easter without having to put our prices up.”
As the brands sold in supermarkets become more expensive Anthony suggests people are becoming more circumspect.
“We haven’t changed the recipe,” he says. “We haven’t skimpflated our product or changed the size. We just put the price up to cope with price increases. People are willing to spend more less often to buy a luxury product … they feel they’re getting better value for money.”