Chocolate prices will make Valentine’s Day very expensive

TheStreet’s Conway Gittens brings you the biggest news of the day, including why Valentine’s Day is getting more expensive.

Transcript

00:00If your sweetie has a sweet tooth then prepare to feel a little sour when you

00:04get to the cash register for Valentine's Day. Chocolate prices are up an

00:08eye-popping 20% this year. The reason you'll have to pay more to show your

00:12love is due to a surge in the price of cocoa. The raw material used to make

00:17chocolate jumped to a record high of more than $12,600 per metric ton in

00:23December. Years of bad weather and agricultural disease have hurt cocoa

00:27production which is largely done in West African nations like Ghana. Prices

00:32have eased somewhat to around the $10,000 mark but that's still up from

00:37about $6,000 a year ago. Over the past two years the price of making chocolate

00:42has surged more than 167% according to the producer price index. Here's a random

00:49sampling of chocolate prices this Valentine's Day. Lint says a box of

00:54heart-shaped chocolate candy truffles will set you back 22 bucks. Hershey's

00:58locked in prices a year ahead of time so it says a one-pound bar of its

01:02eponymous chocolate will cost $14.99. On Godiva's website you can find a

01:09nine-piece gift box for $22. Americans consume 2.8 billion pounds of

01:14chocolate each year says the Cocoa Merchants Association of America. By the

01:20way, Americans are expected to spend a record $27.5 billion

01:25on Valentine's Day gifts including chocolates in 2025. According to the

01:31National Retail Federation that's up from $25.8 billion last year.

01:36Turning now to financial markets, the Dow got some love on Tuesday after feeling

01:41brokenhearted earlier in the session. Shares of Coca-Cola rallied on a

01:45resurgence in demand for its drinks especially Coke Zero Sugar and Fair Life

01:50Milk. Total sales and profits topped quarterly forecasts. That'll do it for

01:55your daily briefing from New York City. I'm Conway Gittins with The Street.