Halloween nightmare: The spiking cost of cocoa is a fright for candy shoppers

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 manag...