Do you know why Nestle, Hershey, Lindt and Toblerone are all planning price increases?

Do you know why Nestle, Hershey, Lindt and Toblerone are all planning price increases? Well, it's because the chocolate industry is in crisis right now. See, to make a chocolate bar, you need a cocoa bean, three quarters of which are grown in West Africa. But record-breaking humidity and torrential downpours have not only been destroying the crops, they've caused an outbreak of disease among the cocoa trees. And with way less cocoa to go around, the chocolate world has become a feeding frenzy, with the bigger chocolate companies taking as much as they can. As a smaller brand, we've been left out to dry as the price of cocoa tripled on us. And so to weather the storm and not raise prices, we've had to start playing a game of cents. Can we save money on labor by making more squares in a shift? If so, we save 2.3 cents per bar. Could we negotiate with a packaging supplier for a better deal on our wrappers? That's another 1.6 cents. Is there someone we could hire in-house to maintain and service our machines? Now they'll break down less, wasting less squares and saving us another 1.2 cents. Each cent we save has a huge impact at balancing out the rising cost of cocoa. But with cocoa prices not looking like they're coming down for another two or three years, things are looking dire. But there is hope. A new innovation recently discovered by food scientists that would solve our high ingredient costs, but it comes with a really big change. So follow us for part two.