Americans like their food. Holidays are often known by the dishes that we serve. Thanksgiving is a bit unique in that most of us converge on turkey, though diversity obviously exists. What about Easter? There’s not really the same focus on a single food like there is for Thanksgiving. My impression is that people eat daytime or lunch foods that include ham, lamb, or just about anything. My family tends to make tacos.
What am I saying?! We eat candy! Solid or hollow chocolate bunnies, jellybeans, peeps, and on and on. We fill Easter eggs and keep candy around the office. We literally have baskets full of candy.
A Chocolate Bunny? In this economy?
But have you seen the price of chocolate? Yeesh! The latest figures are from February and the prices for chocolate and cocoa bean products are down 11.7% year-over-year. That’s nice, you may think, our budgets can fit a bit more chocolate into our consumer – I mean Easter – baskets. Great news. The news seems a little less great when you realize that February’s price of chocolate was 90% higher than it was four years earlier in 2022. 90% higher is a lot like 100%, and 100% is double! In fact, the price had peaked at 142% higher by September of 2025, and now prices are quickly falling. See the chocolate-colored line in the graph below.
Continue reading