Illustrative image: Gemini Nano Banana My family can sometimes be divided along particular lines.
There is an unfortunate division along the lines of Star Wars and Star Trek. Those on the dark side have yet to properly understand how a teleporter is infinitely more powerful than a lightsaber.
There are also those cultists who believe a phone is not a phone without the “i”, and those sensible people who are not paranoid about Android.
Chocolate is a great bringer of family peace in these moments.
Those who support Star Wars and Star Trek can both align on a 5 Star bar. There is plenty of space for Peppermint Crisp. Even the person who likes nuts in their chocolate (gross!) is given some space.
But it would seem that while those bars are doing quite nicely, in fact the people who make the bigger chocolate slabs are under a lot of pressure.
Tiger Brands confirmed on Monday, June 1 that they’re selling the equipment that makes Beacon chocolates and sweets, but keeping the bars.
Their CEO, Tjaart Kruger, told The Money Show that the bigger slabs have been “very unprofitable” for quite some time. The assorted chocolates and Easter Eggs have been losing money too.
But they make good money, with good margins, off the bars.
In fact, he suggests the entire chocolate business is under pressure, because the price of cocoa “spiked so heavily” 18 months ago.
But the real longer-term problem is the “driver for healthier products”. He says they’re seeing more demand for savoury snacks and healthier snacking.
Think of their Jungle energy bar, which is now number two in the bars category. It gives you the same feel as a chocolate bar but is healthier (well, at least it looks healthier; whether it is healthier is up to someone who spent a lot more time studying than I did).
This would make sense in many ways.
In societies with big middle classes we are seeing more demand for healthier products and less demand for the more fun, unhealthy stuff.
Beer makers have been reporting selling lower volumes of “normal beer” while doing quite nicely from the zero-alcohol stuff (at some point those terms might well reverse soon, and what we call “zero alcohol beer” now might become “normal” while beer with alcohol could become known as “alcohol containing beer”).
Some spirit makers are reporting lower volumes too, while the wine market is also in a very slow and very long decline.
It would make sense then that this applies to the chocolate market too.
And it might explain why bars, containing smaller amounts of chocolate, are still profitable, while bigger slabs are not.
It also suggests that a product like a TV Bar will sell because it’s quite small. It’s an indulgent R15 treat. A big slab, all to yourself, is something else entirely.
This might also cast the situation around Beyers Chocolates in a slightly new light.
As Currency News has reported, while the financial problems for Beyers did start when Woolworths ended their contract, the real disaster was that Checkers said it had been supplied defective products.
That led to products being recalled and Beyers being forced to resupply them. And that was the point at which its lender, Absa, decided enough was enough.
This doesn’t necessarily absolve Woolworths, nor does it prove that some of what Kees Beyers claimed was said to him by Woolworths officials was not said.
But it does show that Beyers could not have been right when he says the only reason his factory went into liquidation was Woolworths.
And when you consider that while Tiger Brands, which has a very good view of the overall food market, believes that smaller bars are the future, well, the type of chocolates Beyers makes might not have that big a future.
On the other hand, Woolworths, a company that really knows its market, has invested hugely in bringing in other chocolates to take the space previously occupied by products made by Beyers.
And only a fool would write off chocolate entirely.
Many people have memories going back to their earliest days that involve chocolate.
For most of us, as young children, nothing was as highly prized.
It was a feature of parties and presents and school prizes and so many other things.
In some ways, it occupied the space that alcohol took later, accompanying celebrations and gatherings.
Many older people seem to relish a chocolate bar, suggesting the joy is lifelong.
And as humans we have been eating chocolate for much longer than almost anything else.
Like beer, it seems we have been consuming it for thousands of years. And, also like beer, we won’t just stop eating it now.
But it could enter another phase, where we eat less actual chocolate and the real competition comes from the ability to make healthier products that contain just a bit of chocolate.
Or something a lot like it. DM