Chocolate prices for Valentine’s Day are set to look stubborn even though a key ingredient has eased, according to data and industry commentary cited in an Associated Press report. The ingredient benchmark—cocoa—has fallen sharply since the prior Valentine’s season, but the retail price tag can lag behind commodity moves and reflect other cost drivers and demand signals.
The report said cocoa prices have dropped nearly 70% since last Valentine’s Day, yet consumers in the United States were not seeing immediate relief at stores. It pointed to market research company Datasembly, which found that chocolate prices at U.S. retail stores rose 14% between Jan. 1 and the first week of February compared with the same period last year. The report also noted that the period in 2025 included a 7.8% rise for the same weeks.
One reason for the gap is that commodity prices do not necessarily pass through quickly into shelf prices. Chris Costagli of NIQ compared the dynamic to gasoline pricing, saying that even if the cost of oil declines, companies do not instantly reduce prices because they may have already purchased product at higher costs.
The report traced the cocoa spike in 2024 to insufficient rainfall and crop diseases in West Africa, where more than 70% of the world’s cocoa is produced. It said cocoa prices more than doubled in 2024 and then began to decline after weather conditions improved in Ivory Coast and Ghana and as production increased in Ecuador and other countries, citing an analysis by J.P. Morgan.
Even as supply improved, the report said lower global demand also pushed cocoa prices down. As chocolate got more expensive, consumers bought less, and manufacturers responded by using less chocolate per item or shifting to other products such as gummy candies to keep prices in check, Costagli said. In the U.S., the report said annual retail chocolate sales rose 6.7% in 2025 compared with the prior year, “largely because of price increases,” while the number of individual products sold fell 1.3%, also citing NIQ data.
Tariffs added to the inflation pressure as well, the report said. It described a tariff averaging 15% on cocoa-producing countries applied last February that raised the price of U.S. cocoa imports, citing the U.S. Federal Reserve. It said that in November, tariffs on cocoa and other commodities that cannot be grown in the U.S., including coffee, spices and tropical fruit, were removed, but tariffs of 15% or more on products from the European Union—including chocolates—remained in place.
The report also said pricing decisions reflect not only ingredient costs and past contracts, but current shopper behavior. Costagli said companies watch whether buyers will still pay the higher price point; he asked whether they “really take the price down” if customers keep buying at that level.
Manufacturers’ strategy illustrates the delayed response. The report said Mondelez International, which owns brands including Oreo, Cadbury and Toblerone, raised prices by 8% globally in 2025 to counter higher cocoa costs. It said Mondelez increased prices even more in Europe and then saw a significant decrease in the amount of products sold, prompting price cuts this year in some markets, including the United Kingdom and Germany.
Mondelez’s chairman and chief executive, Dirk Van de Put, told investors in a February conference call that the company had adjusted pricing based on the importance of specific consumer “price points,” and said it did not plan immediate price cuts in North America, where the report said price increases and sales volume losses were more moderate.
The report described how consumers responded by shifting what they buy rather than uniformly paying less. In the U.S. last year, it said two segments grew: value brands and super-premium brands. Costagli said growth in super-premium lines was less surprising because those products were already priced higher, while mainstream makers raising prices pushed some customers to “trade up” to pricier or higher-end options.
At the same time, the report said some price-conscious shoppers “traded down” from mainstream brands to value offerings. It said value brands—including Whitman’s and some store-brand chocolates—sold more products, as customers appeared willing to buy less expensive items when prices rose, with Costagli saying the savings from trading down were greater than they used to be.