Hershey, Mondelez bet big on Easter as cocoa price crisis looms

By Jessica DiNapoli, Maytaal Angel and Richa Naidu With shoppers' "impulse buys" of chocolate and candy at convenience stores and in grocery checkout lines down, according to industry data, special occasions like Easter and Halloween are increasingly important to the companies' sales.

That makes seasonal sales key. Easter sales of candy in the United States, the world's biggest chocolate consumer, are expected to at least reach last year's total of about $5.4 billion, although this will be driven mostly by price increases not volumes sold, according to the National Confectioners Association.

Data from the National Confectioners Association shows that last year, the volume of chocolate and candy sold for everyday occasions fell 3.6% compared to 2022. Volumes of chocolate and candy sold for seasonal occasions like Easter rose slightly by 0.1%.Branch projects that given the continued inflation in cocoa, the trend will continue.

John Ament, an independent consultant and former global vice president of cocoa at M&Ms maker Mars, said there is no doubt that chocolate will be more heavily discounted this Easter compared to last because consumers are weary of price increases. Even so, it's getting tougher to push through price hikes. Data from Nielsen shows the price per unit of chocolate in the U.S. rose 10.4% in the year to early March, versus a 14.3% gain in the same period a year earlier.

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