Cocoa Shock: Why Valentine’s Chocolate Costs More (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Attention chocolate lovers, prepare for sticker shock this Valentine's Day. This little box of truffles and bonbons is going to cost you more this year. Chocolate's about 14% more expensive than this time last year. That's much worse than the price hike ahead of last Valentine's Day. This is a painful lesson in how global commodity markets work. The problem is a shortage of the main ingredient in chocolate, cocoa beans. Extreme weather caused a bad harvest a few years ago in West Africa, where most of the world's cocoa is produced. Cocoa prices, they skyrocketed like never before. They went from around $2,500 a metric ton to nearly $13,000. And here's the kicker. With chocolates on store shelves this Valentine's Day, they were made with beans bought at or near those crisis level prices. But there is good news. Cocoa prices, they have crashed back to earth and analysts are hopeful that chocolate prices will come down in time for Halloween. It's pretty good.