Cocoa prices dropped. Chocolate prices didn't. The chocolate companies blame weather, tariffs, and a war in Iran. Then they announced their brilliant solution: premium products and social media trends.
Let me get this straight. Your input costs fell. Your output prices stayed high. Sales tanked because nobody wants to pay seven dollars for a Snickers. Your response was to make the chocolate fancier and hire someone to post on TikTok.
This is the equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot and then deciding what you really need is a better shoe.
The weather excuse held up for about six months when cocoa was actually expensive. Fine. Droughts happen. Crops fail. But now cocoa's cheaper and you're still charging like you're hand-delivering each bar from Ghana on a golden parachute. The tariffs line is at least creative. Blame the government. Classic move. The Iran war affecting chocolate sales is where I draw the line. What, did Hershey have a factory in Tehran nobody knew about?
Here's what actually happened. Prices went up when costs went up. Profits looked great. Then costs came down and some executive in a conference room said hey, what if we just didn't lower prices. What if we told them it's premium now. What if we made it artisanal. What if we got an influencer to eat it while doing a dance.
Retail traders saw the cocoa futures chart reversing and bought calls on Hershey thinking they'd cracked the code. Genius stuff. Really impressive technical analysis. You connected two whole data points.
The chocolate companies will keep the prices high until sales collapse enough to matter. Then they'll announce a new value line with worse ingredients and act like they're doing you a favor. They'll call it Chocolate For The People or some f*cked up name that sounds like a nonprofit.
But sure, the Iran war is why your Toblerone costs twelve bucks now.
Photo by Sara Gomes on Unsplash
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