After its new American owners fiddled the recipe for Cadbury’s Creme Egg, the company has been hit by falling sales and multi-million pound losses.
The Creme Egg producers, Mondelez, challenged British palates by swopping the Dairy Milk content with a cheaper chocolate. Protests ensued, but the manufacturer did not crack.
Research for trade magazine The Grocer found that the company lost more than £6 million on Creme Eggs.
Moreover, other of the firm’s best-selling Easter chocolates lost an additional £4 million in sales - Cadbury Egg’n’Spoon, with us since 2012, accounted for £1.2 million of the loss.
Not so, cried Mondelez.
Marketing manager Claire Low told The Grocer: "The fundamentals of Cadbury Creme Egg remain exactly the same. It's simply not the case that Creme Egg has always been made with Cadbury Dairy Milk."
A Cadbury spokesman said the product was "exactly the same as the original 1971 recipe with delicious Cadbury chocolate and a unique gooey creme filling. In fact, only six out of 45 years of gooey history saw the shell made with Cadbury Dairy Milk.”
Easter is a crucial time for chocolate profits. This year’s early Easter will make it difficult for manufacturers to recover lost sales.
But Mondelez is not lying down. It said it will launch new seasonal products and a brand new Easter pack design.
And it is not alone. According to The Grocer, competition will be sharp as new chocolate products hit the market, such as Mars’ Galaxy Golden Eggs and its enlarged Malteaser Easter bunny range along with Kinder Joy from Ferrero.
Consumer temptation has increasingly led them away from big brands in favour of own label and offerings from discounter supermarkets.
