Oh, fudge!
Chocolate lovers will soon have to pay extra for some of their favorite candy bars.
Hershey announced Wednesday it will raise U.S. retail prices later this fall due to the cost of cocoa remaining near record highs. Some of the company’s products will see a price hike in the low double-digit percentages, while others will have a smaller pack size.
“This change is not related to tariffs or trade policies,” Hershey said in a statement. “It reflects the reality of rising ingredient costs including the unprecedented cost of cocoa.”
Cocoa prices have more than doubled over the past two years due to poor weather and disease that harm crops in West Africa, which supplies more than 70% of the world’s cocoa.
Cocoa futures, which are binding contracts for a specific quantity of cocoa, stood at $7,380 per metric ton on Wednesday, according to the International Cocoa Organization, which releases a daily average of prices in London and New York.
That’s down from December’s peak of $11,984, but it’s still 121% higher than two years ago.
That has led to a 41% increase on the price of a candy bar, with the average unit price increasing from $2.43 in July 2021 to $3.45 last week, according to Nielsen IQ, a market research company.
Hershey — which makes Reese’s, KitKat, York and other popular chocolate candies — is now set to become the latest chocolate manufacturer to pass a portion of its increased costs on to consumers. The company said the price increases will not apply to products specially packaged for Halloween.
Swiss chocolatier Lindt said it raised prices by 15.8% in the first half of this year. Cloetta, a Swedish confectionary company, and Nestle also had recent hikes on chocolate products.
“The development of the global chocolate market in the first half of 2025 was a continuation of what we saw in 2024, with cocoa prices remaining close to record highs,” said Adalbert Lechner, Lindt’s CEO, in a conference call with investors.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
