If you’ve gone to your local store or tried to buy online and noticed Hershey’s cocoa powder missing, you’re not the only one. This baking aisle staple has gotten harder to find, and it’s not just a fluke. There’s a mix of reasons, and most of them come down to the global cocoa market going sideways over the last couple of years.
The Significance of Hershey’s Cocoa Powder (and Why People Notice)
Let’s be real: Hershey’s is the classic cocoa powder for American bakers. If you bake birthday cakes, brownies, or just want hot chocolate that tastes like your childhood, it’s probably Hershey’s in your cupboard. The brand has been around for well over a century. So when it disappears from shelves or gets way more expensive a lot of people start asking questions.
How Did Things Get So Weird in the Cocoa Market?
Anyone who follows groceries even a little knows that food prices have been shaky, but cocoa is in a league of its own. Beginning in 2023, cocoa prices started climbing fast. By late 2024, those prices had tripled compared to the year before. Even now, midway through 2026, they’re still about 70% above their 2023 levels. This kind of runaway price surge just doesn’t happen often with baking basics.
But why? The story starts thousands of miles away, mostly in West Africa.
The West African Cocoa Story
Here’s something a lot of people don’t realize: Almost 70% of the world’s cocoa comes from a narrow band of West African countries, especially Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and Ghana. These are not small-time producers. If their crops get hit by problems, the ripple goes everywhere.
What kind of problems happened? Heavy, relentless rain and plant diseases hit cocoa plantations hard in 2023 and 2024. Some areas ended up too muddy to even transport the beans, while others lost big chunks of their crops outright. By the end of the 2023-24 season, global cocoa production had dropped by about 14%. For an ingredient in everything from candy bars to Hershey’s cocoa powder, supply just couldn’t keep up with demand.
Why Prices Went Through the Roof
When the physical supply drops that much, prices almost always jump. But this time, they pretty much exploded. By late 2024, investors and big companies saw the dwindling crop numbers and started piling into cocoa futures financial contracts that basically bet on price changes. This sent prices on the international cocoa trading exchanges to levels nobody had ever seen.
At one point, some cocoa beans were worth more per ton than copper. By 2025, even though more cocoa started flowing out of ports in West Africa again up about 20% in the main countries prices stayed high. It was partly because exchanges themselves ran into liquidity problems (meaning not enough people on both sides of the trade), so volatility stayed wild.
The Hershey Side of Things
Hershey isn’t just buying cocoa for grandma’s baking powder tin. This is a behemoth candy company that needs vast amounts of cocoa every year for its bars, its syrups, and, yes, the cocoa powder you use at home. So when cocoa prices go up, Hershey feels it everywhere.
To keep up with costs, Hershey raised its prices across many products by an average of 9%. This helped them handle the sky-high cocoa, but people started buying less. Volumes dropped 3% overall, and company gross margins (a kind of profit measure) dropped 17 points to 37%. It’s clear that Hershey had to make some calls about what products to prioritize.
With those kinds of margins, you can see why some lower-margin basics, like straight cocoa powder, might get less attention while the company protects its main moneymakers.
Cocoa Futures and Ongoing Price Shocks
You might think once the biggest crisis passed in late 2024, prices would drop right back to “normal.” That didn’t really happen. Futures prices did relax, but market volatility kept swinging. There’s a disconnect between what’s actually happening with real beans on ships and what’s being traded on paper. The result? Manufacturers (and grocers) don’t want to get caught holding pricey inventory if things suddenly flip.
This environment pushes everyone to be way more cautious than usual. Some stores stopped buying as much cocoa powder, and some companies made less. Others shifted focus to higher-margin or more essential products. When the basic math doesn’t work, manufacturers don’t want to keep producing and shipping a product they might have to sell at a loss.
Will the Cocoa Crunch Ever End?
Here’s some better news: By the 2024-25 harvest, people expected the first global cocoa surplus in about four years. Some of this came from “non-traditional” regions countries outside West Africa actually growing their output at a strong pace (about 10% higher year-over-year). For anyone who bakes a lot, a surplus sounds like good news.
But there’s a catch. Even with all that extra cocoa showing up, prices stayed high and unpredictable well into 2026. Everyone from big candy companies to smaller bakeries faced tough choices about when and how much to buy. The financial markets were still jumpy, and food brands had to be careful with their supply contracts to avoid getting burned by a sudden reversal in prices.
Why Is Hershey’s Cocoa Powder Out of Stock Locally?
So, the obvious question: Did Hershey completely stop making cocoa powder? There isn’t any public sign the company closed its cocoa powder lines. Instead, the current shortage looks more like a sort of perfect storm: fewer beans worldwide, manufacturers needing to be picky about what they produce, and retailers extra-cautious about what they put on shelves.
Some stores may not want to risk getting stuck with expensive product that won’t sell, especially if home bakers get sticker shock at new prices. There’s also this weird spot in the market called “demand destruction,” where prices get so high, people just stop buying. That can lead to fewer orders and less production basically, a feedback loop where high costs lead to empty shelves.
Plus, retailers themselves sometimes “manage” their stock aggressively during volatile cycles. They don’t want to over-order when input prices are unstable. So cocoa powder, which isn’t a high-frequency purchase like milk, can start vanishing from your local aisle.
How Hershey Is Trying to Fix Things (and Keep Prices Sane)
For a giant like Hershey, this whole saga has been a lesson in supply chain resilience. According to company execs, they’re investing in sourcing cocoa from more countries and working with new suppliers to try to reduce the risk of this kind of chokehold happening again. Some of this involves infrastructure: making sure cocoa can actually get out of rain-hit regions, and steaming up relationships with non-traditional cocoa growers whose crops are less likely to be wiped out by the same storms.
At the same time, Hershey has said it’s trying not to “break the bank” for the consumer. Sure, prices have gone up, but so far, the company hasn’t pulled the kinds of moves you see in other industries like massive shrinkflation or major product re-formulations. They know the core buyers for cocoa powder are at-home bakers who are especially price-sensitive. It’s a delicate balance.
If you’re interested in how food companies adapt to wild swings in their ingredient costs, sites like The Business Hustler are tracking moves by Hershey and others to keep chocolate and cocoa products on store shelves without making them a luxury good.
What’s the Bottom Line for Home Bakers?
If you’re on the hunt for Hershey’s cocoa powder right now, it’s probably a combination of things keeping it off the shelf: global cocoa shortages, high input prices, supply chain rerouting, retailer caution, and Hershey deciding where to put limited resources for the best bang for their buck. It’s not personal or permanent just a rough phase for both the company and chocolate lovers.
People who rely on Hershey’s classic taste may see it slowly reappear later in 2026 as prices start to stabilize. Company leaders are betting inflation could finally cool on cocoa next year, and maybe even shift towards falling prices. But it doesn’t flip overnight tariffs, shipping costs, and even how much people are willing to pay all play in. For now, keep an eye out when you shop, and maybe try a small store or online retailer if you’re striking out at the big chains.
In the end, this episode has shown how even something simple like cocoa powder gets swept up in global supply, market freak-outs, and company strategies. For now, Hershey’s is focused on riding out the volatility and hoping things normalize soon. If anything, it’s proof that even the simplest baking staple is plugged into a much bigger story.
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