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this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2026
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Well I'll draw the line at alcohol which I see as a public negative. But chocolate?
Can you honestly tell me that the price increases and volume decreases for it have yielded in a better quality product? Someone has to rebalance that scale if the food regulators wont.
Chocolate has experienced extremely high inflation lately because climate change is causing crop failures in countries where chocolate is grown. So no, it hasn't yielded a better-quality product - it has just been necessary to have chocolate on the shelves at all.
That puts a floor on the price that retailers can sell the product for and have it make sense. If carrying the product at that price results in losses due to theft, there's no point selling it for less, because that will incur greater losses. They might try anti-theft measures, or increasing the price to balance the losses - neither of which benefit people in general. If none of that works, they'll just not sell the product at all.
Shouldn't the retailer soak up some of those costs if their suppliers are unable to deliver? In a rational economy where there would be more competition, surely they would take that financial hit to retain their shoppers whilst offsetting the cost on another product.
They don't seem to be doing that. None of them seem to be doing that, and I'm just not buying that the reason is solely because of climate change
I think supermarkets' low profit margins are reflective of a fairly competitive sector. Do you think Sainsbury's, Tesco, Lidl, Asda and the rest all colluded to increase prices on chocolate products... at a time when, coincidentally, the price of cocoa quadrupled? I don't think there's any evidence of that, and the price increase is adequately explained by other factors.
It's worth saying that the commodity price has now come back down (I only just realised this). So prices should be coming back down as well. But prices are always quite sticky, especially on the way down. There are quite easily explained reasons for that which we can go into if you want.
But to answer your question, "Shouldn’t the retailer soak up some of those costs" the rational thing to do is to absorb costs for as long as that is the most profitable thing to do. But if commodity prices literally go up 4X, the only way you can absorb the cost is to be making a large loss on every bar of chocolate sold. Why would you do that, instead of either a) charging more or b) using the shelf space and distribution costs for something else?
You can lay out a scenario where it's rational for the retailer to keep stocking a loss-making product - to get people in the door and to buy other things which net a greater profit than is lost on the chocolate or whatever. But that's just a scenario, and clearly it's only a question of tweaking some values to come up with a scenario where that loss-leader strategy makes no economic sense. Clearly the supermarkets didn't believe it made economic sense.
This isn't people stealing chocolate because it's expensive, it's people stealing chocolate, cuts of meat, and alcohol etc. to resell. They aren't 'rebalancing' anything, they are organised groups who are stealing in bulk to make a profit. This actually increases prices of those goods for everyone else.
Surely they're reselling at far lower prices than they're listed in stores (otherwise who would buy their stolen goods), which forces then the official price for that product to go down in the area, in order to retain shoppers.
For example, there was a time when my cornershop guy was selling 12 packs of Coke for £3.50. I didn't ask where he got them, but I definitely stopped going to my local Sainsbury's which is currently selling 4 packs for £4.50.
The thief got a cut, the cornershop guy got a cut, and the savings were passed on to me. The retailer's stockholders lost some minor value.
I fail to see how this is not a rebalancing of prices.
Because the targets of theft then have to invest in more security while making less money, raising prices for customers.
The shop that bought the item legitimately has to pay the full price of the item from the manufacturer / distributor. They have to sell the item at cost + VAT + a percentage to make money
The thief can sell at whatever price they like because they have no costs and don't pay VAT on the sale.
The second shop has to sell the item at the new cost + new VAT + a percentage to make money. They save twice, on the cost of the item and the amount of VAT they pay.
The people who lose from this are:
If the legitimate shop goes out of business then the whole system fails. Your cheap coke is being subsidised by honest customers.
The thieves aren't taking all their warehouse stock and leaving the sales people on their knees tearing their shirts and cursing the sky.
We're talking 1-2% maximum shrinkage from theft. In the 90s where theft was rampant, such losses were part of doing business, they just soaked it up.
I can believe them upping their security somewhat might incur some cost, but not to the degree of price inflation that we're seeing
Most of the price inflation is because of global supply factors, such as war and climate change driving up the cost of wheat and cocoa, for example.
Shop attendants are absolutely affected as the number of violent and abusive confrontations was estimated around 1300 per day in 2024.