Chocolate is selling like hotcakes (literally), supermarkets are locking up the bars

It seems like a Mickey Mouse story, with greedy thieves who attack mountains of chocolate. And yet it really happens in England where i shopkeepers they were forced to close their doors transparent plastic boxesas if they were jewels, because – explain the police – there are those who steal them on commission to resell them. Sainsbury’s admitted to having locked down the most affected products, with the £2.60 Dairy Milk (around 3 euros) ending up under lock and key in a London branch. And according to the Grocery Store Association the chocolate is increasingly in the sights of delinquentsturning a snack from a few pounds into special goods to be monitored.

The economic lossin fact, is anything but sweet: the Heart of England Co-op group, which runs 38 stores in the West Midlands, Warwickshire, Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, calculated that last year chocolate thefts they cost 250mila sterline (286 thousand euros). It was about the most stolen product by the group in 2024, surpassed only by alcohol in 2025, he said.

Economic losses

Chief executive Steve Browne told the BBC the chocolate theft and “huge problem“In one particular store, a single individual could cost us thousands of pounds in a week,” he said. “They would come in… and then literally empty the entire shelf”, which “can be worth £500”. To cope with the loss, the group spent “£3 million (3 and a half million euros) in security measures and other measures for prevent theft”.

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Sunita Aggarwal runs two mini Market in Leicester and Sheffield: “People come in and steal boxes and boxes of chocolate“, he explained. “We know that the illegal trade it is definitely on the rise. As retailers, we know it’s happening right before our eyes.”

Aggarwal says he has installed more than 30 closed circuit cameras and to use the AI technology to locate the thieveswith photos of Known shoplifters at the checkout.

His team now only half-fills the shelves per limit losses and stopped promoting chocolate in easy-to-reach locations at the end of aisles.

Fiona Avenal Malone runs a shop in Tenby, Wales, and loses 200-300 pounds (230 – 350 euros) per week due to chocolate thefts. “We noticed that we had a whole line of candy bars on display and then suddenly there was only one left,” he said. “Then we checked the closed circuit cameras and understood what had happened. It’s really frustrating.”

Paul Cheema, owner of Malcom’s convenience stores in Coventry, has no doubts: “The Chocolate is the new watchword of organized crime. First it was razors, cheese, coffee. Today, these people who steal goods from convenience stores and supermarkets do so made to order. So now the Chocolate is all the rage“.

The numbers of thefts

Meanwhile, the British Retail Consortium’s annual crime report found that they were recorded last year 5.5 million shoplifting incidents e 1,600 daily incidents of violence and abuse towards the workers in the sector. While this is a 20% decline from the previous year, it is still the second highest figure ever recorded.