The Crash You Missed: Why Your Chocolate Never Got Cheaper
Cocoa fell by more than half from its record and then nearly doubled again, so why did the price on a small baker's chocolate invoice barely move?
FactUnion VerifiedEvery fact on the episode's fact sheet was checked against its sources. Wrong facts were corrected. What this meansFacts checked 26 Oct 2026
Chapters (10)
About this episode
It's holiday-order and wedding-quote season, and bakers keep hearing that cocoa crashed. Tess and Ray follow the price from the trading screen to the cake maker's inbox. There's a record close in December 2024, a short dip to about three thousand dollars a tonne in spring 2026, and a rebound to near fifty-six hundred by October. Underneath all of that sit the hedges, the ten-month lag and the cocoa-butter ratios that actually set what couverture costs.
The twist: the crash was a short window that mostly closed before it could reach anyone buying by the case. A supplier pricing off a hedge near six thousand dollars is close to today's market, not miles above it. The Monday check: pull your last chocolate invoices, find out when your price resets and what it's tied to, and line each invoice up against where futures stood about ten months earlier. Some figures here come from secondary summaries and are flagged in the episode as such.
Hosted by Tess and Ray, performed by synthetic voices. Supported by Lynqly.
Facts and sources
Every fact used in this episode, with the sources it was checked against. Download as data
202 of 202 recorded lines matched the checked script.
A market summary citing ICE data reports a record New York cocoa close of $12,565 per tonne on 18 December 2024, set by the nearby March contract.
The December 2026 cocoa contract in New York settled at US$5,645 a tonne on 16 October 2026, down 3.19% on the day.
Trading Economics, a CFD-based series, says cocoa reached an all-time high of 12,906 in December 2024 and stood around $5,592 on 23 October 2026.
The ICCO reported end-of-December 2024 nearby cocoa levels of US$11,441 in London and US$11,545 in New York.
CoBank, in a report published around 26 March 2026, said: “Last fall, a number of chocolate manufacturers hedged at around the $6,000 mark, half the all-time high set in late 2024.”
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CoBank said cocoa futures were over $6,000 as recently as New Year’s Eve and fell to roughly $3,100 in March 2026.
CoBank said the cocoa decline “will not likely correlate with a similar drop in chocolate candy retail prices.”
Per CoBank, Mondelez CEO Dirk Van de Put said at CAGNY that his company did not hedge in fall 2025.
Investing.com showed a 52-week range for US cocoa futures of 2,846.00 to 6,821.00 as of late October 2026.
Reuters reported on 20 May 2026: “It can take 10 months or so for cocoa price changes to filter down to chocolate retail prices because chocolate makers hedge or lock in purchase prices months in advance and hold large inventories.”
Reuters reported that supermarkets and other buyers had been pressuring chocolate makers to lower prices since around mid-2025, and that Mondelez trimmed some European chocolate prices in April 2026.
Reuters said Barry Callebaut’s ingredients are used in a quarter of the world’s chocolates, and quoted CEO Hein Schumacher saying in April 2026 that “some customers (are) going back to chocolate.”
A cocoa-supply explainer says: “Most physical cocoa beans contracts are priced using: Futures price + differential,” with the differential set by origin, quality and certification.
The same explainer says cocoa liquor, butter and powder are priced as (futures × an index) plus a differential, and that the index is set by demand in consuming countries and can change many times a month.
The explainer gives a liquor example using a factor of 1.4 on $3,500 futures, or $4,900/t, which it says reflects about 20% shell and 5% moisture lost in grinding.
The cocoa liquor ratio was reported at 1.45 in February 2026 and at 1.44 in April 2026, and both reports described it as stable for several months.
Hershey’s 30 July 2026 release for the quarter ended 28 June 2026 said organic, constant-currency net sales rose 3.6%, “driven by net price realization of approximately 12 points,” while volume declined approximately 8 points.
Lindt & Sprüngli’s 21 July 2026 half-year release cited “Groupwide price increases of 11.8%” alongside a volume/mix decline of 7.5% and organic growth of 4.3%.
Barry Callebaut’s H1 FY2025/26 report (September 2025, February 2026), published 16 April 2026, showed sales volume down 6.9% to about 1.01 million tonnes, with full-year guidance of a 1 to 3% volume decline.
A secondary analysis reports that the BLS candy and chewing gum price index rose 8.1% in the year to August 2026 and 13.7% from December 2024.
UK maker Whitakers wrote: “Many manufacturers (ourselves included) secure cocoa on longer-term contracts, often agreed when prices were significantly higher.”
Checked but not used (1)
Trading Economics reported ICE cocoa inventories of 3,635,354 bags on 21 October 2026.
Removed during checking (4)
Trader Panamir's May 2026 report put the natural cocoa butter ratio (FOB West Africa) at 1.87, the liquor ratio at 1.44 and the powder ratio at 1.62, and forecast the butter ratio trending up toward 2.05 over four quarters.
Cocoa liquor is roughly half fat, in the form of cocoa butter.
Whitakers also said "the full extent of those increased costs was never fully passed on to consumers."
Global cocoa bean production reached 5.8 million tonnes in 2024, with Ivory Coast producing 38%.
