Consumer chocolate prices jumped 14.4% year-on-year between January 1 and early February, according to market research firm Datasembly.
That's up significantly from a year earlier, when the price increase was 7.8%, and 10.5% in 2024, according to the research firm, which tracks the best prices of more than 4,000 chocolate products.
The higher chocolate prices reflect the ongoing effects of a global shortage of the key ingredient: cocoa beans. This shortage, caused in part by poor harvests caused by extreme weather in West Africa, caused cocoa prices to soar to unimaginable heights.
"Supply suddenly dropped, even though demand remained largely the same. "Prices have gone through the roof," David Branch, a sector manager at the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute, told CNN in an interview.
West Africa, which produces about 70% of the world's cocoa, has suffered such a loss of supply that cocoa bean futures have jumped from about $2,500 per metric ton in mid-2022 to more than $12,600 by the end of 2024.
"We've seen unprecedented cocoa inflation," Stacey Taffet, chief growth officer at The Hershey Company, told CNN's Kate Baldwin this week.
Hershey's CEO said the company is focused on keeping items "as affordable as possible," noting that about 75% of the company's products are priced below $4.
The good news for consumers (and chocolate companies) is that cocoa prices have since collapsed, recently falling below $4,000 per metric ton for the first time in years.
The bad news: The chocolate on shelves today is made from beans priced at or near the peaks reached during the crisis.
“Retail prices have remained stable because candy makers buy cocoa months in advance and work with existing inventory,“ Branch wrote in a report.
The spike in chocolate prices is yet another reminder of how while the overall inflation rate has eased from its four-decade high in 2022, the prices of some products are still rising rapidly.
Americans are expected to spend $2.6 billion for candy this Valentine's Day, according to estimates from the National Retail Federation.