Unlock the editor’s summary for free
Roula Khalaf, editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The meteoric ascent of the Dubai chocolate has triggered a global crunch of pistachio supplies, exacerbating a worldwide scarcity of the green nut and sending its upward prices.
The bars, a marriage of pistachio cream, grated cakes and milk chocolate, were a modest success after its launch of 2021 by the Boutique Emirati Chocolatier Fix, until a video of Tiktok turned them into a global sensation.
The clip, published in December 2023, has accumulated more than 120 million views and fed a worldwide madness for pistachio chocolate, which generated a large number of imitations.
Due to madness, pistachio nucleus prices have increased from $ 7.65 per year a year ago to about $ 10.30 for Libra now, Giles Hacking of Nut Trader CG Hacking said. “The pistachio world takes advantage of at this time,” he said.
Chocolate is not cheap. Dubai’s offering from Lindt at £ 10 for 145 grams in the United Kingdom, more than double its other bars. But consumers are so interested in some stores limit how many bars can each client buy, while the British and British WM Morrison have launched pistachio Easter eggs.
Pistachio actions were already decreasing after a disappointing harvest last year in the United States, the main exporter of the nut. The cultivation of the USA was also of the highest quality than usual, leaving less than the cheap nuclei without shell that are generally sold as ingredients for chocolate and other foods, Hacking said.
“There was not much in supply, so when Dubai’s chocolate appears, and [chocolatiers] They are buying all the nuclei in which they have their hands. . . That leaves the rest of the short world, ”said Hacking.
Iran, the second largest producer in the world, exported 40 percent more pistachios to the EAU in the six months until March 2025 than in the full 12 months before that, according to the Iran Customs Office.
The shortage marks a strong investment of 2023 when the global pistachio supply exceeded the demand and caused a price drop, said Behrooz Agah, a member of the Board of the Iran Pistachio Association.
Due to that excess, “a variety of by -products were available, such as pistachio butter, oil and pasta, which could be used in a wide range of pistachio foods,” he said. “That was almost at the same time that Dubai Chocolate was launched and gradually went viral worldwide.”
In California, some farmers have begun to change almonds to pistachios in recent years due to a large extent to low almond prices, but those trees will not begin to produce until the harvest of the next season in September.
Meanwhile, chocolatiers say they can’t produce enough cream -filled bars.
“It seems that it came out of nowhere, and suddenly you see it in all the stores in the corner,” said Charles Jandreau, general manager of Prestat Group, owner of the luxury chocolate brands in the United Kingdom.
“No one is ready for this,” he said, describing his struggles to acquire Kataifi, the grated pastry chef of the Middle East used in the cream.
Chocolate lovers had already been suffering a crack of cocoa supply, which led to almost triple prices in 2024 such as extreme climate and disease crops. Producers have been selling smaller bars with new recipes that skimp in cocoa.
Fix, who named his original viral bar “cannot get a Knafeh from him” after a traditional Arabic desert, he said that although it was “incredible” to see how the company had inspired “a movement in chocolate”, they worried that others could exploit their brand to deceive customers. The company does not sell its bars outside the EAU and only puts them on sale for two hours a day.
His rivals do not flinch.
We are “overwhelmed with the demand for Dubai chocolate,” said Johannes Läderach, executive director of Swiss Chocolatier Läderach. “We have thrown them a few months ago, and it simply does not stop, it is just going through the roof.”
