This Halloween season could be even spookier than previous years, thanks to the rising price of chocolate.

The price of cocoa has spiked since 2023, which has impacted the cost of your favourite chocolate bar.

Colin Mang, assistant professor in the department of Economics, explains what’s behind the price increases, how businesses are managing the increase and what we could see in the future.

What are the numbers here — how does the price of cocoa this year compare to last year?

At the start of 2023, cocoa was US$2.50 per kilogram. By April 2024, it spiked to US$9.85 per kg. It has come down a bit and is about US$6.40 now, but that’s still two and a half times more expensive than it was at the start of 2023.

What’s behind the price increase?

Swollen shoot disease is a fungus that is attacking cocoa plants in Ghana, one of the world’s largest producers. As a result, we’re seeing much lower crop yields and shrinking global supply.

It’s harder for candy companies to source the raw ingredients to make chocolate and that drives up the price.

We see examples of “shrinkflation” all over the grocery store. Could this be in store for our chocolate bars — or is it already? How are companies mitigating this increase?

Shrinkflation happens when food processing companies reduce the size of their products, but continue to sell the new smaller quantity at the same price as the old larger one.

Because the food inputs are becoming more expensive over time, either they need to raise prices — which consumers don’t like — or cut costs by using fewer raw materials.

Since cocoa has become more expensive and harder to get, candy companies have been shrinking the sizes of their chocolate products over the past year.

For example, instead of selling boxes of 100 mini chocolate bars for Halloween, you’re now seeing boxes of 90 for the same price at the grocery store this year. That’s a 10-per-cent reduction in the amount of candy you’re getting, but you’re still paying the same price as before.

Do you think it will keep going up — should we be stocking up on chocolate?

The price of cocoa has come down quite a bit from its peak in April, but it’s still more than double what it used to be and that probably won’t change.

While there’s an acute shortage of cocoa because of plant disease right now, climate change poses a longer-term problem for agriculture in cocoa producing countries, so yields are unlikely to fully recover.

Expect the price of cocoa and therefore chocolate to be permanently higher than in the past.

Do we have a sense of how much people typically spend to give out Halloween candy? Can we expect that to go down this year given the economic climate out there?

Last year, a typical Canadian household would spend between $25 and $40 on Halloween candy.

The prices of the mini candy boxes haven’t changed much; it’s the quantities that have gotten smaller. I think families will spend about the same as they did last year.

If you’re used to buying two boxes of candy to hand out, that’s what you’ll buy. But what you’re going to find is that you won’t give to as many kids as you used to because there’s fewer items in each box now.