Suchard chocolate nougat unsold at €5, shelves remain full

Suchard chocolate nougat unsold at €5, shelves remain full

Suchard chocolate nougat has stopped selling. This is not a perception: store shelves are full, discounts pile up, and some argue consumers have made their verdict. The bar costs around €5, has lost grams, and no longer tastes like the version from the eighties, according to various messages. The result is a perfect storm of price, recipe, and competition that has turned a Christmas classic into a commercial corpse.

The price that breaks the budget

The most repeated complaint concerns the price. A Suchard chocolate bar has settled around €5, a figure many consider disproportionate for a product that is essentially sugar with some cocoa. In some stores it has been discounted to €3.99, but even that hasn't worked. Shelves remain full. The perception of being expensive has lodged in the buyer's subconscious, and when that happens, the product is dead.

Some argue the problem isn't just the price, but the value-for-money ratio. It is claimed that sugar, the main ingredient, is one of the few products that hasn't suffered inflation: a kilo costs around 85 cents in supermarkets. If the manufacturer buys by the ton, the cost is even lower. So why €5? The answer lies not in production costs, but in what the market is willing to pay. And the market has said no.

The recipe that is no longer the same

The other major argument concerns the recipe. Various messages agree that current Suchard does not taste like the eighties or nineties versions. The quantity has been reduced, the formula modified, resulting in a bar with more sugar and less chocolate. A calculation circulating online clarifies this: if the bar weighs 230 grams and 50% is refined sugar, we are talking about 115 grams of pure sugar. The rest is fried rice, lard, and additives. Cocoa is the least present.

That perceived loss of quality clashes with the price hike. The conclusion is inevitable: less quantity, worse quality, higher price. A cocktail that explains why consumers have stopped buying it. It is no longer just that it is expensive; it is that it is not worth what it costs.

Competition eating up the market

While Suchard became more expensive, private label brands filled the gap. Private label chocolate nougat offers, according to various analyses, exactly the same quality at half the price. Consumers did the math and switched shelves. It is not a matter of taste, but of wallet.

The irony is that Suchard remains, for some, the only edible chocolate nougat. But even those buyers acknowledge the current price is unjustified. Brand loyalty has a limit, and that limit is called €5.

The economic context explaining everything

Behind the sales drop is a broader context. Wages in the private sector have been frozen for over a decade while prices have continued to rise. People have cut spending on branded goods and switched to private labels. Chocolate nougat is no exception; it is a symptom.

Some point to the euro as the ultimate cause. The exchange rate with the Swiss franc has gone from 1.60 to 0.93, representing a 40% devaluation. For a product manufactured by a Swiss multinational, this increases costs in euros. But this explanation doesn't convince everyone. After all, sugar is cheap and the recipe hasn't exactly improved.

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The most reasonable prediction is that Suchard will remain on shelves, but with less space each time. Discounts will multiply, prices will drop, and perhaps the brand will recover some lost ground. Or perhaps not. Because once consumers stop buying something, convincing them again is much harder than the first time. And chocolate nougat, once loved like baby Jesus, is no longer what it was.