As the calendar drifts into the dog days of summer, business has slowed down for Carbondale-based Pollinator Chocolate.
Pollinator Chocolate founder Mark Burrows has been staying afloat selling wholesale to restaurants and hotels in the Valley and beyond, plus keeping busy selling coffee to loyal clientele at the Cocoa Club on Highway 133. All the while, the chocolate world is being rocked by a shortage of cacao beans, leading to an explosion in bean prices, which has affected Burrows’ business.
Located on the west coast of Africa, the neighboring countries of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire produce 65% of the globe’s cacao. Early this year, the region was faced with severe drought followed by flooding, which has resulted in reduced fruiting by the cocoa trees and widespread disease. Farmers in the region have been left with two-thirds to three-quarters less than their usual crop.
Cacao is a commodity with prices controlled by the stock market, and values have fluctuated wildly in the past few months as the market has tried to adjust to the shortage. In April of this year, the price of one metric ton (MT) of cacao beans exceeded $10,000 for the first time in history. Until 2023, prices hugged $2,000 to $3,000. After the shortage, Burrows said that the market is expected to settle somewhere around $7,000 to $8,000 per MT.
On June 18, Burrows sent an email to customers painting a picture of the issues being faced by the chocolate industry and announcing that it will be raising its prices by $1 a bar. Ordinarily, specialty bars from Pollinator Chocolates cost between $10 to $12. Since the cost of beans has quadrupled, Burrows elaborated on the relatively modest increase in prices, stating that for now the $1 rise is to reduce sticker shock among consumers. However, as the year goes on, Burrows said that prices will likely continue to rise to adjust to the new market.
While the increase in costs makes business difficult for Pollinator Chocolate and other craft chocolatiers, Burrows pointed out a bittersweet silver lining. For farmers in parts of the globe still producing cacao — including Southeast Asia and South America — the price increase means farming is more profitable than ever and, for independent farmers, once barely-
livable wages have multiplied.
Fair treatment of the farmers has always been a pillar of Pollinator Chocolate’s mission. Since its inception, Burrows has worked with cocoa brokers who provide not only high quality beans, but who ensure that no slavery or child labor was used on the plantations they buy from.
Additionally, since the massive rise in prices has made cocoa farming more profitable in the short term, Burrows said that new plantations are already springing up across the globe to break into the market. This will likely reduce prices, eventually, but, Burrows hopes, not at the cost of farmers’ pay.
Large confection manufacturers such as Hershey’s and Ghirardelli maintain massive stockpiles of cacao, and are likely to use up the beans in storage before purchasing more. In order to keep costs down, Burrows said that consumers might see less true cacao in their Snickers bars and more filler ingredients by the end of the year.
However, smaller artisanal chocolatiers who don’t have the same massive stockpiles of cacao have to bite the bullet and pay the higher price tag to keep manufacturing their products.
For Burrows, the changing costs have highlighted how the supply chain — a commonly named culprit for shortages during the pandemic — constantly affects local businesses.
“This is what we’ve been hearing about for years that nobody really understands: like what it takes to get a bag of coffee from Venezuela to your neighborhood,” said Burrows. “It’s the same thing with cacao … It’s heavy … it needs to be transported and a lot of humans have to be involved with the process.”