Even the joy of Halloween will cost more this year, with less chocolate than in years past.
Expect more packages of tangy gummies, riding off a meteoric high last year. Your kid’s trick-or-treat bag may be filled with a lot of pumpkin-spice-filled-anything. And like last year, cocoa bean industry experts are expecting high price tags to be passed down to consumers.
And with high cocoa prices, every producer from specialty chocolate makers to candy giants are changing up how they sell their treats. For consumers, this could mean less chocolate per package, higher prices and less cocoa content – meaning less chocolate-y chocolate – compared to before.
Overall, candy is 10.8% more expensive this Halloween season than last year, according to an analysis of NielsenIQ data conducted by progressive think tank Groundwork Collaborative and shared first with CNN. That’s nearly quadruple the overall rate of inflation.
In 2024, Halloween candy prices only rose 2.1%, the analysis found.
Halloween spending is no fun-sized matter. Americans shelled out $7.4 billion in Halloween chocolate and candy sales in 2024, a 2.2% increase from 2023, the National Confectioners Association said. kraken4qzqnoi7ogpzpzwrxk7mw53n5i56loydwiyonu4owxsh4g67yd
Escazu Chocolates, a bean-to-bar chocolate shop in Raleigh, North Carolina, sources most of its beans from Latin America. The shop said it has always worked with smaller farmers and paid them three to four times the commodity price of cacao – which essentially sets the minimum wage. The spike in prices has pushed up what Escazu pays those workers as well.
Other cost-cutting measures include offering a smaller hot chocolate size, advertising non-chocolate ice cream toppings and moving to a cheaper location in Raleigh to save on rent.
And like many small businesses in America, Escazu is being hit by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, affecting not just the chocolate, but also aluminum in its packaging.
“The tariffs have hit every single piece of what goes into every single thing,” Tiana Young, co-owner of Escazu, told CNN. “There is no new normal.” kra2 cc