Through the Gold Rush of the mid-1850s, Etienne Guittard, a French chocolatier, sailed to California like many others, hoping to strike it wealthy.
Nonetheless, he quickly realized his fortunes lay not within the mines however in promoting the goodies he introduced with him from his uncle’s Tournus manufacturing facility to commerce for mining provides.
In 1868, after a stint refining his abilities again in France, he returned and began a small enterprise, E. Guittard & Co., on San Francisco’s waterfront. Along with making chocolate, he offered tea, espresso and spices.
The enterprise turned a fixture within the metropolis because it grew into one of many nation’s main metropolitan facilities. Guittard turned the chocolate maker of alternative for prime cooks like Thomas Keller and eating places corresponding to Chez Panisse, and provider to iconic confectioner See’s Candies for the reason that Nineteen Thirties.
Over the previous century, the family-owned enterprise has survived quite a few threats to its existence, together with the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the Nice Despair, large sugar value hikes within the Nineteen Seventies and the sudden deaths of the corporate’s president and successor within the late Eighties, to not point out competitors from artisanal manufacturers within the 2000s.
Now it’s going through one more disaster: the Trump administration’s international tariff warfare.
“It was like a jab after a good hard right,” mentioned Gary Guittard, the fifth-generation president and chief govt of Guittard Chocolate Firm.
Guittard had simply absorbed the shock of final yr’s 180% spike in cocoa costs (on prime of the 61% improve the yr earlier than), the results of shortages as a result of local weather impacts and drought, when Trump introduced in April that he was implementing international tariffs that would come with cocoa beans, chocolate’s key ingredient.
Whereas companies from autos to toys are grappling with the consequences of recent international tariffs, the imposition of retaliatory levies on imports has injected new turmoil into the already turbulent chocolate market. For a small, slim margin enterprise like Guittard, tariffs have the potential to wreak havoc, as costs are anticipated to rise much more, creating recent uncertainties for producers that depend upon supplies from overseas.
“I didn’t understand the numbers until I started playing the numbers,” he mentioned. With the worth of cocoa beans tripling up to now two years to $12,931 per metric ton from $3,261 in 2023, Guittard mentioned he was now having to have a look at including one other 10% into the price of doing enterprise.
“I immediately thought, we have to raise our prices,” he mentioned.
Whereas different producers might flip to alternate options to assist soften the tariff blow, American chocolate makers are wholly reliant on imports. Cacao beans, the uncooked unprocessed ingredient used to make chocolate, can solely develop in tropical areas which can be 20 levels north and south of the equator.
The bulk is produced within the West African nations of Ivory Coast and Ghana; it is usually grown in elements of Central South America and Southeast Asia.
“We are really having a lot of discussions on how we want to approach the tariffs and whether we can afford to mitigate the effect on our customers by absorbing some of the effects on cost. But that, of course, will affect our bottom line as well,” he mentioned.
The corporate, now based mostly in Burlingame, Calif., south of San Francisco, sources beans from a number of nations together with Ghana, Ivory Coast and South America. The blends have given Guittard chocolate distinctive taste profiles, however it has additionally served as a hedge in opposition to the vagaries of the market.
“We have a blend of beans, purely and precisely because of these kinds of events: political events or diseases or anything that can happen,” Guittard mentioned.
Chocolate makers since 1868, Guittard started supplying See’s Candies within the Nineteen Thirties.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Occasions)
Trump’s tariffs have injected a brand new and complicated variable into that calculation. Whereas America’s buying and selling companions got a minimal baseline 10% obligation, plenty of the cacao producing nations, the place Guittard purchases its beans, have been slapped with larger tariffs. As an illustration, the Ivory Coast was given 21% and Madagascar a forty five% obligation.
“I think mathematically you can figure that out,” mentioned Guittard, however famous that the image turns into more and more sophisticated whenever you attempt to decide costs when a specific product makes use of bean blends which have completely different tariffs. As an illustration, the corporate’s stock presently has pre-tariffed beans and is anticipating shipments to return in from South America that might be tariffed.
“There’s 10 different ways to look at it. So we’re just trying to figure out what’s the best way for us and our customers.”
Guittard says the corporate is leaning towards absorbing a portion of the associated fee. “We have to decide how much we can absorb and for how long. We certainly can’t absorb it all. We’re a small family company, not a large multinational conglomerate.”
Guittard, which employs about 240 individuals, is a small participant within the almost $30-billion U.S.-based chocolate market, producing roughly $100 million yearly. The corporate didn’t disclose earnings says it’s worthwhile.
In contrast to the main U.S. producers corresponding to Hershey and Mars, Guittard, like most small companies, doesn’t have the sort of sources or affect to get a carve out or cushion the approaching monetary blow.
Chocolate large Hershey, which earned $11.2 billion in income final yr, is searching for an exemption from the federal authorities to assist blunt an estimated $20 million in tariff bills this quarter.
The corporate’s chief monetary officer Steve Voskuil mentioned that it was “using every lever at our disposal to get those tariffs changed.”
Swiss chocolate conglomerate Lindt & Sprüngli, which acquired Ghirardelli in 1998, introduced that it’ll sidestep the U.S. as a provider with the intention to keep away from tariffs.
The Nationwide Confectioners Affiliation, an advocacy commerce group for sweet makers, can also be seeing methods to navigate the scenario on behalf of its members. “We’re watching this closely,” mentioned Christopher Gindlesperger, the NCA’s senior vp of public affairs and communications.
“We’re trying to look at it through our customer’s eyes. We don’t want it to affect them,” mentioned Guittard. “A lot of our customers are family businesses as well.”
Beneath the Trump administration’s new international tariff coverage, these Madagascar cacao beans are topic to a forty five% obligation.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Occasions)
For now, Guittard says he should play the ready sport and see the way it unfolds. A key issue, he says, is how shoppers react and whether or not they are going to restrict or cease shopping for sweet bars and baking chocolate.
“This is a lot more complicated to implement than meets the eye, and we want to be transparent and honest about how we do it rather than using [tariffs] as an excuse to raise prices, which is not what I want to do,” he mentioned.
