Despite inflation, the French seem not to want to give up sweet treats, ice creams and sweets in mind (AFP / Archives / Joël SAGET)
Will Easter egg sales hold up to soaring prices? The professionals remain confident, especially since the French seem not to want to give up sweet treats, ice creams and sweets in mind.
“Easter is the occasion” and “might as well have fun”, says, leaving a chocolate shop in Paris, Maurice Ryffel, 90 years old.
“I don’t look too much at the prices,” says Albert Fitoussi, a 35-year-old restaurateur, after shopping at an artisanal chocolate factory.
In France, chocolate sales volumes for the first three months of the year (until March 26) are down slightly over one year, according to the Circana consultancy, but are currently down less than for the whole of 2022.
Chocolate prices, however, jumped 10.3% in February over one year, according to INSEE. The rise in prices is even 12.2% for confectionery, and 14.1% for ice cream.
“We are quite confident” for Easter, a holiday which represents 8% of annual sales, Gilles Rouvière, secretary general of the chocolate union, told AFP.
He evokes a “rather stable” budget of 20 euros per household for Easter, underlining a “very wide range” which allows “each family, according to its budget” to find its pleasure.
In his Parisian chocolate factory, Pierre-Benoît Sucheyre, has “adapted” some recipes to “stay on the same prices as last year”, with, for example, a peanut praline rather than a pistachio creation.
Chocolate prices jumped 10.3% in February year on year, according to INSEE (AFP/Archives/JOEL SAGET)
On the consumer side, the Swiss giant Lindt has passed on part of the cost increases – raw materials, energy, packaging – to prices.
But “we are convinced that our consumers will continue to treat themselves to the small luxury of a piece of good chocolate in their daily lives,” said management in its annual letter to shareholders.
“The greater sensitivity of customers to price is a challenge” but “Swiss producers are holding up relatively well”, explains to AFP the president of the professional federation Chocosuisse, Urs Furrer.
“We are seeing more purchases from discounters,” Ben De Schryver, financial director of the Swiss group Barry Callebaut, world number one in cocoa and chocolate preparations, nevertheless noted on Wednesday.
– Ice cream, candies, cookies, sodas –
Beyond Easter, other “little pleasures” are not sacrificed in this period of high inflation, starting with ice cream.
Other “little pleasures” are not sacrificed in this period of high inflation, starting with ice cream (AFP/Archives/TIZIANA FABI)
“It’s the arrival of the sun,” says Ousmane Anegble, 36, after buying cones in Paris for him and his son. And sweets, “even if it increases, we don’t realize it” because “it does not fit into everyday consumption” in the same way as meat or vegetables, he believes.
The French are “ever more numerous to consume ice cream” an increase to 25 million households in total, according to the association of ice cream companies, which sees it as a “pleasure product par excellence”.
On the candy side, sales increased by 5.3% in volume in 2022, according to the NielsenIQ panel, and cookies by 2.3%.
To offer some sweets to her grandson, Christine Pollet, 73, “didn’t look at the price”, she said as she left a candy store.
“Since the end of the Covid, the market has started to rise again” and at the end of 2022 regained “the level of 2016”, according to Jean-Philippe André, president of Haribo France, according to whom sweet confectionery is “a little pleasure still reasonable “.
Sweets and cookies are attracting more and more customers (AFP/Archives/MYCHELE DANIAU)
Candies and cookies are attracting more and more customers, according to Emma Sarrazy, analyst at NielsenIQ. “Household consumption in these categories is also higher in 2022” with, however, a drop in range for “pleasure” purchases.
Sodas are also popular: in 2022, the sales volume of the drinks giant Suntory Beverage & Food France increased by 11% over one year, with in particular one million new consumer households won over for their Schweppes brand, “a figure rarely achieved” according to its managing director Pierre Decroix.
These are products “with which you can have fun for less than one euro”, he believes.
© 2023 AFP
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