‘Are you kidding me?’: Man does the math on Valentine’s Day chocolate at Walmart and can’t believe what he finds

If you’re buying heart-shaped chocolates for Valentine’s Day, you should check the price carefully. One shopper did the math on Godiva and Ghirardelli prices and found some shocking numbers. Most people expect a small price increase for holiday packaging, but they don’t expect prices that seem completely unreasonable.

According to Bro Bible, that’s what happened to one man from Arkansas while shopping at Walmart. The TikTok account for Carroll’s Candies, a candy shop in Jonesboro, Arkansas, posted a video showing the unusually high chocolate prices they found in-store and online. The video creator said right away, “Godiva has lost their minds.”

He said he already showed a box of Ghirardelli chocolates in an earlier video that cost about $50 per pound. He said the Godiva prices he found were “way worse.” The creator showed a photo of a small heart-shaped Godiva box priced at $15.97. That price doesn’t sound too bad at first, but it gets worse when you do the math. He pointed out that the tiny 2.9-ounce box actually costs $88 per pound. To show how small that is, he said 2.9 ounces is just five caramels on a scale.

These luxury chocolate prices reach shocking levels during Valentine’s season

He wanted to know if Walmart was charging too much or if Godiva set these prices. He thought to himself, “is it the big box store that’s being greedy, or is it Godiva?” Many shoppers already worry about dark chocolate’s lead content, and now they have to deal with shocking prices too.

The prices on Godiva’s website were even higher. He checked larger boxes, thinking bigger sizes might cost less per pound. Instead, he found a sold-out box weighing a pound and a half priced at $175, which equals $113 per pound. A 6.2-ounce box priced at $55 works out to about $141 per pound.

“You would think it wouldn’t get worse, but it does,” he said. Even an eight-piece box priced at $30 costs about $150 per pound. “Are you kidding me?” he said. The high prices come from rising cocoa costs worldwide. Cocoa prices hit around $10,000 per metric ton earlier this year. This happened because bad weather damaged cocoa crops, disease hurt plant growth, and illegal gold mining destroyed cocoa farms. Smuggling also made farmers sell beans across borders for more money.

While cocoa prices have dropped to $5,500 now, stores haven’t lowered their prices yet. Premium brands also price their products based on their brand name rather than just ingredient costs, especially during holidays. Shoppers reacted with disbelief in the comments. 

One person joked, “It’s cheaper to go to Disneyland & get the free sample at Godiva shop.” Another said, “those 8 dollar dubai chocolate bars are looking like a better buy now.” One commenter added, “When people complain about gas per gallon I also think about the math of food and beverages at that quantity. So this video is my dream content.” These prices are almost as shocking as that viral chocolate shoplifting incident caught on camera at checkout.