Hershey’s CEO Admitted Two Years of Price Hikes Still Aren’t Covering the Cost of Chocolate

Cocoa prices just broke a record that stood for almost fifty years.

Now families buying Halloween candy are feeling exactly what that means at checkout.

Hershey's CEO finally admitted why two years of price hikes still are not enough.

A Fifty Year Record Nobody Wanted to Break

Cocoa futures shattered an all-time price record in 2024, a mark that had stood since 1977.

Fox Business reported cocoa prices climbing 88 percent in a single year on the way to that record.

The cause was not a mystery.

Ivory Coast and Ghana grow roughly 60 percent of the world's cocoa supply, and both countries suffered a brutal stretch of extreme weather and crop disease.

Analysts described a double whammy of torrential rain followed by punishing drought, conditions that wrecked harvests and invited pests into already weakened cocoa trees.

Chocolate makers responded by shrinking their chocolate offerings on store shelves and leaning harder on cheaper candy instead.

Mondelez pushed Sour Patch Kids.

Hershey leaned on Twizzlers ghosts.

The chocolate shortage did not end in 2024, and it has not ended now.

Cocoa futures have since fallen by more than half from that 2024 record as West African harvests partly recovered.

They are still trading far above what chocolate makers were paying only a few years ago, and Fox News reports chocolate costs are up nearly 30 percent compared with last Halloween and 78 percent over the past five years, citing Circana and Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Why Hershey Still Cannot Make the Math Work

Hershey told investors last Halloween season that sales began slower than expected.

The company pointed to warmer weather and to Halloween landing on a Friday, which pushed roughly a third of seasonal shopping into the final week.

That explanation only covered part of the story.

Hershey also admitted its price increases over the prior two years still had not caught up with what cocoa was actually costing the company.

This Halloween, that same pattern showed up again, with candy sales off to a slow start and chocolate prices climbing even further, according to the New York Post.

Shoppers are not imagining the squeeze.

A global cocoa shortage two bad harvests deep does not fix itself in a single news cycle, and the bill keeps landing in the same place: the candy aisle, right before trick or treaters hit the sidewalk.

Trump Pulled Cocoa Out of the Tariff Fight

The federal government does not control West African weather, but it does control tariffs.

The Trump administration rolled back tariffs in November on food imports the United States cannot grow at home, including coffee, beef, tropical fruit, and cocoa.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the goal was to "bring the prices down very quickly," singling out coffee and bananas as products the United States simply does not grow itself.

Food costs were already running hot heading into that decision, with coffee prices up 18.9 percent and beef up 14.7 percent from the year before, according to Fox station reporting on the rollback.

Chocolate makers did not get a tariff bill on cocoa they cannot grow on American soil anymore.

That relief is real.

It just cannot undo two straight years of ruined harvests an ocean away.

What a Record Breaking Cocoa Crisis Actually Costs Families

Here is the part nobody says out loud while they are dumping fun size bars into a bowl.

A global cocoa shortage was always going to hit Halloween no matter who occupied the Oval Office.

What matters is what Washington does with the piece of the problem it actually controls.

Cutting the tariff on a crop America cannot grow is exactly that kind of move, and it stands in sharp contrast to years of inflation under the last administration that left household budgets strained long before this cocoa shortage ever started.

Families are still carrying that hangover into every shopping trip.

Stack two ruined cocoa harvests on top of it and the result is a candy bowl that costs more and holds less than it did two Halloweens ago.

Cocoa trading far above where it sat before 2024 means that bowl is not getting cheaper again any time soon, tariff relief or not.

Parents handing out that candy on October 31 are the ones covering the difference.

Sources:

• New York Post Business, "Halloween Candy Sales Off to Slow Start as Chocolate Prices Soar, Consumers Struggle With Living Costs," New York Post, October 25, 2026.
• Breck Dumas, "Halloween Candy Aisles See Shift Amid Sky-High Cocoa Prices," Fox Business, October 30, 2024.
• Stephanie Weaver, "Trump Expands Tariff Relief on Coffee, Beef From Brazil," FOX Local, November 21, 2025.
• Fox News Staff, "Halloween Candy Hauls Shrink as Chocolate Gets Swapped for Cheaper Alternatives," Fox News, 2026.
• Trading Economics, "Cocoa Price," Trading Economics, October 22, 2026.