Chocolate Letters Much More Expensive Than Last Year: Here’s Why
Sinterklaas will have to scrape together quite a lot of (choco)coins this year if he wants to buy chocolate letters. They have become considerably more expensive; sometimes as much as 25% more expensive than last year. How come?
The chocolate letter season has been underway for a while now. If pepernoten are already in stores in August, chocolate letters naturally can’t be far behind. And what premieres we’ve already seen! The chocolate letter with pickle, the Dubai letter, the IJ letter… There’s no stopping it. This apparently also applies to the price of chocolate letters, because they’re shooting through the roof this year.
High prices of chocolate letters
Chocolate letters in supermarkets are still the most affordable compared with chocolate letters from pastry shops and patisseries. These days, you’ll easily pay more than €10 for a genuine quality chocolate letter. You can even find them for €14 at the pastry shop or patisserie. But don’t be mistaken: you also pay considerably more for letters from the supermarket than you did last year.
For example, Albert Heijn’s letters increased in price by 13% compared with the prices in 2023. Kruidvat—which we recently said was a place where you could score cheap snacks!—has even raised the price of its chocolate letter by 25%. And Jumbo’s letters appear to be cheaper than last year (€1.99 then – €1.59 now), but you also get less. If you had a 160-gram Jumbo letter in your hands last year, you now have to make do with 135 grams.
This is why chocolate letters are so expensive
What’s behind this? It’s a problem we’ve actually been seeing for some time, and have even written about before. The most important raw material for chocolate, cocoa, continues to rise in price. Whereas a tonne of cocoa used to cost around €2,000 to €3,000, the price is now as high as €7,000 per tonne. So the prices of chocolate letters have to rise too. Cocoa is so expensive because there are many problems in West Africa, in the countries where a great deal of cocoa is grown. There have been quite a few crop failures, for example, and things aren’t exactly going smoothly geopolitically either. Many new cocoa plantations have been established in South America, but at the moment they still can’t keep up with the high demand for cocoa.
Tips for buying affordable chocolate letters
As a chocolate letter lover , you have several options. Not buying a chocolate letter is obviously out of the question, because these things are simply outrageously delicious. What you can do is adjust the timing of your purchase. Buy a letter very early (although that won’t help you now) or very late. That way, there’s a good chance the price will be a little lower. Another good tip: buy a less popular letter. Q, X and Z are simply sold less often and are sometimes less expensive. You’ll just have to go through life as Qans, Xoen or Zuzanne for a while, right?
Also read:
- Supermarket hit: Lidl’s advent calendar with chocolate liqueurs
- Tony’s Chocolonely has launched a new Sinterklaas chocolate bar
- Incredible: this easy chocolate mousse made from… rice (and just 4 ingredients in total!)
Sources: Metro, Hart van Nederland, BNN Vara
