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☆ As cocoa prices soar this Easter, chocolatiers consider alternatives
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-28 | by ( John Towfighi | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

CNN —Cocoa prices are surging so high, the Easter Bunny might want to hoard its chocolate. Poor climate and crop diseases in West Africa – home to 70% of global cocoa production – have tightened supply and caused prices to skyrocket. As prices rise, some chocolatiers are exploring cost-cutting alternatives, like diversifying their products to depend less on cocoa. Yet mining often destroys farms and the possibility of a livelihood in cocoa production, Issaka said. “Given the persistently high cocoa prices, it may be necessary for us to make responsible adjustments to pricing in the future,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.

Persons: Hershey’s, Shaquille O’Neal, Michele Buck, Billy Roberts, Roberts, ” Roberts, Issaka, Will Kletter, Kletter, “, Peng Xu, Christopher Taylor, Li, Taylor, ”, “ We’re, “ It’s, ” Taylor Organizations: CNN, Cadbury, NCA, “ Brands, Industries, International Cocoa Organization, Rabobank, US, ”, Euromonitor Locations: West Africa, North Region, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Silicon, Washington ,, Manhattan

☆ Pi Day means pizza deals
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-14 | by ( Ramishah Maruf | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +1 min

New York CNN —Pi Day isn’t just about showing off how many numbers you have memorized – restaurants from Burger King to California Pizza Kitchen are offering deals and discounts on Thursday, March 14th. Pi Day has also become synonymous with pizza pie (and other round foods) – here are some deals to round out your celebration. Pizza HutFrom March 12-14, Pizza Hut has been offering a free large one-topping pizza with purchase of a large menu-priced pizza. 7-ElevenLoyalty members can get any flavor large pizza for $3.14 in 7-Eleven, Speedway and Stripes stores – limited to one transaction, two per day. Burger KingAs part of its week of breakfast deals, Burger King is offering a free Hershey’s sundae pie with a $3.14 purchase.

Persons: Albert Einstein’s, Burger Organizations: New, New York CNN, Pi, BJ’s, Burger King Locations: New York, Burger King, California, United States, Burger

☆ I tried the viral 6-to-1 grocery-shopping method. I saved money and wasted less food.
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-23 | by ( Paige Bennett | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

I tried the viral 6-to-1 grocery-shopping method to see if it could improve my life. I saved money and minimized food waste, so I plan on using the 6-to-1 method again in the future. The 6-to-1 grocery-shopping method went viral when Chef Will Coleman posted a video on TikTok about how he grocery shops. So, I did the same when I tried the 6-to-1 method. Overall, the 6-to-1 method was handy, and I'd use it againI used almost all the groceries I purchased for this experiment.

Persons: —, you’ve, Will Coleman, Coleman, Paige Bennett, ricotta, pesto, Parmesan Organizations: Service

☆ The Fed can still break markets. Here’s how
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-13 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

Those gains came even as Federal Reserve officials attempted to reduce investors’ lofty expectations for a plethora of interest rate cuts this year. It is now signaling that interest rates could come this year but not until spring or summer. That means they think the Fed is keeping interest rates too high and could potentially slow down economic growth too much and risk a recession. That makes the NFL and the Super Bowl all the more valuable to advertisers trying to reach a mass market. Li-Lac Chocolates, which calls itself the oldest chocolate shop in Manhattan, told CNN that their raw chocolate prices are up 13% this February compared to a year ago.

Persons: Torsten Slok, Jerome Powell, Raphael Bostic, Olivier Darcy, Sunday’s, CNN’s John Towfighi, ”, Michele Buck Organizations: CNN Business, Bell, New York CNN, Big Tech, Federal Reserve, Investors, Nasdaq, Federal, Apollo Global Management, National Association for Business, Atlanta Fed, CNN, Kansas City Chiefs, San Francisco 49ers, CBS, Chiefs, Philadelphia Eagles, NFL, Allegiant, NFC, Fox, AFC, Super Bowl, Companies, Hershey Co Locations: New York, There’s, Las Vegas, West Africa, North America, Manhattan

☆ With a low cocoa supply, this Valentine’s Day chocolate prices are up
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-12 | by ( John Towfighi | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

Rising cocoa prices aren’t the only concern for customers this Valentine's Day. Last Thursday, Hershey Co. said it would cut 5% of its workforce after historic cocoa prices and inflation-weary consumers dampened fourth quarter earnings. “And it looks like it’s not necessarily going to subside anytime soon.”The Supreme Valentine’s Day SweetRoughly 92% of Americans say they plan to share chocolate and candy for Valentine’s Day this year, according to the National Confectioners Association. In 2023, Valentine’s Day chocolate and candy sales exceeded $4 billion, the NCA says. Issaka said that while high demand and low supply raise prices, cocoa farmers are getting squeezed.

Persons: ”, Michele Buck, Billy Roberts, ” Roberts, Lindsey Nicholson, Marnie Ives, Ives, ” Ives, “ It’s, Karl Schneider, Roberts’s, Issifu, Issaka, ” Issaka, “ I’m, Cote, Will Kletter, Sabi Ibarra Guerrero, Uwe Gneiting, Gneiting, Joke Aerts, Aerts, ” Aerts, Sia Kambou, Price, Tony’s, “, they’ve, CNN’s Eva Rothenberg Organizations: CNN, Hershey Co, National Confectioners Association, NCA, Cocoa, Oxfam America, Getty, Fairtrade, Cote d’Ivoire, “ Locations: West Africa, North America, Manhattan, Queens , New York, Neck, NY, Bloomfield , NJ, Ghana, North Region, Cote d’Ivoire, Silicon, Africa, Accra, Cote, Hermankono, AFP

For the second year in a row, U.S. shoppers are seeing double-digit inflation in the candy aisle. That’s on top of a 14% increase in candy and gum prices in October 2022. “The price of candy has gotten to be outrageous,” said Jessica Weathers, a small business owner in Shiloh, Illinois. Meanwhile, global sugar prices are at 12-year highs, Goughary said. Buck said Hershey is trying to meet consumers’ needs with offerings in value stores and pack sizes at various price points.

Persons: ”, Jessica Weathers, ” Weathers, Dan Sadler, Kelly Goughary, Goughary, —, Michele Buck, Buck, Hershey Organizations: Gro Intelligence, Aldi, Mars Inc, Hershey Co Locations: Shiloh , Illinois, West Africa, El, Ivory, India, Brazil

☆ Why are all the cool Kit Kats only available internationally?
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-02 | by ( Danielle Wiener-Bronner | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

They create buzz and urgency, which help decades-old brands like Kit Kat stay relevant. A few years later, Rowntree’s renamed the product Kit Kat Chocolate Crisp. Nigel Roddis/ReutersAfter manufacturing and distributing Kit Kat for decades, the British company entered into a deal with Hershey, giving it control over US Kit Kat distribution in 1970. Nostalgic candies, like traditional Kit Kat bars, exert a powerful hold over those who loved them in their childhood, she noted. When people reach for a Kit Kat, they’re reaching for a reliable jolt of sweetness and good feelings, she said.

Persons: Kit, Kit Kat, Kat, Kats, Behrouz Mehri, Nestlé, Lynn Dornblaser, Dornblaser, “, Kit Kat wasn’t, Chocolate Crisp, Rowntree’s, Kat Chocolate Crisp, Rowntree's Kit Kat, Nigel Roddis, Hershey, Kit Kats, Rowntree Mackintosh, Milo Kit Kat, Chris O’Donnell, ”, O’Donnell, it’s, Milo, Kit Kat Japan, Kat Churro, Justin Kukura, Marcia Mogelonsky, they’re Organizations: New, New York CNN, Target, Walmart, Hershey, Getty, Mintel Consulting, Reuters, Nestlé, Lotus, Hershey Company Locations: New York, United States, Japan, AFP, British, Hershey , Pennsylvania, ., Australia, Hershey

☆ How Long Will Companies Keep Raising Prices on Consumer Goods?
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-10 | by ( J. Edward Moreno | More About J. Edward Moreno | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Food prices have gone up at a faster rate than other consumer goods over the past year, and it’s unclear when prices will stop rising. Food can vary widely in price as companies shoulder costs like ingredients and labor, which can be volatile. Companies say consumers have stayed loyal despite the price increases but are starting to pull back. Many consumer goods companies have raised prices by double-digit percentages in the past year, a move they often attribute to rising commodity prices. Hershey’s, for example, has said rising costs for sugar and cocoa — a result of weather conditions where those staples are grown — are to blame for its price increases.

Organizations: Companies

☆ ‘Insidious: The Red Door’ Review: The Ghost of Jump Scares Past
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-07 | by ( Jason Zinoman | More About Jason Zinoman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“Insidious,” whose fifth installment opened Friday, is a second-tier horror franchise — it’s not even the best James Wan franchise starring Patrick Wilson, which would be “The Conjuring” — with a few elite jump scares, including one of the best in the genre. In the original in 2010, Lorraine Lambert (Barbara Hershey) is telling her son, Josh (Wilson), about a horrible dream when a red-faced demon suddenly appears behind his head. It’s a magnificent shock because of the askew blocking, the patient misdirection of the editing and Hershey’s committed performance. In “Insidious: The Red Door,” a grim, workmanlike effort that collapses into woo-woo nonsense, Wilson makes his directorial debut, and demonstrates he grasps the importance of that jump scare, which is sketched in charcoal on paper next to his name in the opening credits. This prickly relationship is at the center of the movie, as dad drives his son to college.

Persons: it’s, James Wan, Patrick Wilson, Lorraine Lambert, Barbara Hershey, Josh, Wilson, askew, Hershey’s, Lorraine, Wilson doesn’t, Dalton, Ty Simpkins

☆ Kit Kat Cereal is hitting US shelves
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Ramishah Maruf | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

General Mills is betting a lot of people do, as it is launching Kit Kat Cereal nationwide beginning this month at $5.69 for a standard-size box. A limited edition Spider-Verse Cereal – red “spiderberry” puffs with blue and white marshmallows – will be selling for a less expensive $2.99 in stores. General Mills is also launching miniature Lucky Charms and Cocoa Puffs, adding to its miniature Trix, both of which are priced at $5.69. They could either be eaten dry or be mixed in with cold water to create instant milk and cereal. Cereal sales surged to over $9 billion in 2020 or up 9% from 2019, as millions worked from home, according to data from NielsenIQ.

☆ What it’s like to be a theme park designer
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Kate Springer | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +10 min

“Back then, it definitely wasn’t cool to be into theme parks, but I was obsessed,” Jeffs, 39, tells CNN. Jeffs points to the immersive “Pacific Rim: Shatterdome Strike” ride at Trans Studio Cibubur, part of Indonesia’s largest theme park chain, as an example. “When I was growing up, theme park design was often dismissed as a rinky-dink, second-class artistic discipline simply because it was rarely well done. “That first summer, we drove 10,000 miles and hit up virtually any theme park that had managed to re-open,” he says. Courtesy Taylor JeffsAnd though he’s ridden over 600 roller coasters and explored theme parks worldwide, Disneyland in California remains his all-time favorite park.

☆ #BoycottHersheys spreads on Twitter over Women’s Day campaign
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Danielle Wiener-Bronner | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

New York CNN —Calls to boycott Hershey are spreading on Twitter in response to the chocolate company’s International Women’s Day Canadian campaign, which includes a trans woman. It’s the latest example of a brand generating a strong but mixed reaction to a promotional campaign that touches on cultural or societal issues. Fae Johnstone, a queer, trans and feminist activist, posted about being included in the Her for She campaign in a series of tweets on Wednesday. On Thursday, some used #BoycottHersheys to voice their opposition to the campaign — while others used it to criticize the critics. In this campaign, Hershey tapped five women, including Johnstone, who are activists in their fields.

☆ Premarket stocks: Why traders are so infatuated with inflation
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

What’s happening: Investors will get some market direction clarity on Tuesday morning with the release of key inflation data. It’s not all about the Fed: Traders are infatuated with CPI, but it’s likely going to affect markets more than it will future Fed policy. “CPI is the big inflation report that affects markets more than any other,” he said. Even beyond housing, the services sector has seen year-over-year inflation higher than 3.9% every month since March 2021, said Chaudhuri. And as Powell noted in Washington last week, the stickiness of core services inflation is his greatest concern.

☆ ‘America’s Test Kitchen: The Next Generation’ Review: Tinkering With the Ingredients
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-07 | by ( John Anderson | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

The universe won’t collapse because of what happens on a cooking show, but “America’s Test Kitchen: The Next Generation” is symptomatic of larger disturbances in the force of food TV—including creative stasis, casual shoplifting of ideas and the fact that too many borrowed ideas can spoil a perfectly presentable broth. The taste-test segment involves familiar brands available at a local supermarket and end in some surprising results. (Hershey’s wins the cocoa-powder faceoff again!) Among its “flaws” is a menu that’s anachronistically meat-centric and on-air talent who are on air because of their food knowledge, not their media training. Bridget Lancaster and Julia Collin Davison are the no-nonsense hosts-chefs; the taste-test guy, Jack Bishop , is reassuringly uncomfortable at being on TV at all; equipment assessor Adam Ried is burly, affable and you believe what he tells you.

☆ Hershey’s Turnaround Story Isn’t Sweet. It’s Salty.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-28 | by ( Ben Cohen | Photographs Ross Mantle For The Wall Street Journal | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Any stock that doubles in five years, outperforms tech giants over three years and beats more than 450 companies in the S&P 500 this year is clearly worth studying. And there is no better time to look at one of the biggest winners of a terrifying market than Halloween. Because that company happens to be Hershey .

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