Easter egg-stortion: the increasing cost of Easter chocolate

Cadbury: dairy milk block versus chocolate Easter egg

Cadbury’s 100g dairy milk Easter egg retails for $6.00 at Woolworths, so that’s $6.00 per 100g.

But your money will go much further if you buy a chocolate block.

A 180g block of Cadbury dairy milk chocolate will cost just 1¢ less than the 100g chocolate egg, but you get a lot more chocolate for your money, with a unit price of $3.33 per 100g.

While a block of chocolate offers more bang for your buck than a chocolate egg, they’re both significantly more expensive than they were last year, undergoing a 20% price increase.

Lindt chocolate bar versus Easter bunny

The iconic Lindt chocolate bunny weighs 100g and costs $11.00, equating to a unit price of $11.00 per 100g. This makes it the most expensive item in our survey per unit.

Buying a block of Lindt chocolate offers much better value, with a 100g bar of Lindt Excellence costing $8.00 at a unit price of $8.00 per 100g.

Lindt’s chocolate products have undergone the most significant price rises in our study, with the bunny increasing in price by 24%, and the block undergoing a 67% price increase, since 2024.

Cadbury versus own brand chocolate Easter eggs

If you’re weighing up the relative price of a block of chocolate, you probably have an eye for a bargain, so we’ve looked at the prices of the Cadbury Easter egg compared with the own brand products offered by Woolworths and The Warehouse. Foodstuffs doesn’t yet offer an own brand Easter egg.

The cheapest chocolate Easter egg can be found at The Warehouse, where a 100g Waikato Valley Easter egg retails for $4.00, that’s $4.00 per 100g.

Woolworths’ own brand chocolate egg finds itself halfway between The Warehouse and Cadbury products, with a 100g chocolate egg retailing for $5.00, so $5.00 per 100g.

While they have not increased in price as much as the Cadbury offering, these two eggs are not immune from inflationary pressures. From 2024 to 2025, The Warehouse’s chocolate egg increased in price by 14% year on year and Woolworths’ egg by 11%.

Do-it-yourself Easter gift set: crème egg

We know that trying to explain the per gram savings in a block of chocolate to a tearful child excited about an Easter egg is probably not your idea of a good time.

To avoid this and still find value for your money, we’ve looked at ways to replicate the classic Easter gift set for less.

A Cadbury crème egg gift box, including a 100g hollow chocolate egg and six miniature crème eggs – that’s 170g of chocolate, will set you back $15.00 at The Warehouse. This equates to $8.82 per 100g.

But if you create that gift box yourself, buying the standalone Cadbury egg and a bag of crème egg minis will save you money and give you more chocolate.

A bag of mini crème eggs costs $8.50 for 110g, while the 100g Cadbury hollow chocolate egg costs $6.00. Combined, you’re looking at spending $14.50 for 210g of chocolate, which comes to $6.90 per 100g.

We know that most parents aren’t simply trying to get as much chocolate into their children’s belly as they can afford, but making your own Easter gift set could be particularly useful if you have more than one child as you can spread the bag of miniature crème eggs across multiple DIY gift sets.

The battle of the bunnies

At $11.00 per 100g, the Lindt Easter bunny was the most expensive piece of chocolate in our Woolworths shop.

However, if you shop around, you can find much better value.

Pak’nSave offers the same chocolate bunny for just $7.49, while you can find it for $10.00 and $9.99 at The Warehouse and New World respectively.

Chocolate has increased in price significantly

While we set out to explore the premium we pay for Easter egg or bunny-shaped chocolate, our most important finding was that the price of chocolate has increased significantly since 2024.

The chart below shows the price per 100g of all the chocolate Easter products we were able to find in both our 2024 and 2025 mystery shops.

With the exception of the Cadbury crème egg gift box, every item we surveyed in both 2024 and 2025 had undergone a significant price increase.

The 100g Lindt Excellence chocolate bar has undergone the biggest increase, with the price rising 67%, from $4.80 per 100g in 2024 to $8.00 per 100g in 2025.

What’s driving the chocolate price increases?

The increased price of chocolate is driven by significant increases in the price of cocoa globally since the start of 2023.

From the start of 2020 to the end of 2022, the global cocoa price averaged US$2.40 per kg.

But from the start of 2023, the price began to rise significantly. In January 2023, the price of cocoa was US$2.65 per kg. One year later, the price had almost doubled, reaching US$4.40 per kg. In the first two months of 2025, the price has more than doubled again, reaching US$10.30 per kg.

Nestlé has joined Whittaker’s on the sideline for Easter chocolate sales

Last year, Whittaker’s was notable by its absence in our Easter chocolate comparison, having discontinued its chocolate kiwi. The company told us that, due to constraints on housing new equipment and the number of products it can make at one time, it was not currently making shaped chocolate. This policy has not changed, and the chocolate kiwi is now more endangered than its feathered counterpart.

But joining Whittaker’s on the Easter sideline this year is chocolate giant Nestlé. We asked Nestlé why it had reduced its Easter offer. It said, “This year, we have made the decision to reduce our Easter range … This is due to several different commercial reasons – but we hope to have a bigger range hopping on to the shelf next year.”

The result is less competition for Easter chocolate sales this year, with supermarket shelves dominated by Cadbury products.

Our Easter egg mystery shop

Last year, we undertook a basic experiment to find out whether Easter chocolate was more expensive than chocolate blocks. We looked at the cost of chocolate across a range of brands through an online shop at an Auckland Woolworths store. We also looked at the price of own-brand Easter eggs at The Warehouse.

This year, we’ve repeated the experiment, keeping as many variables as possible the same so we can make year-on-year comparisons.

Our 2025 mystery shop was based primarily on an online shop at an Auckland Woolworths, which took place in mid-March, while we have selected some other products from The Warehouse, Pak’nSave and New World to compare prices across stores.