Is an Easter egg more expensive than a chocolate block?

To find out, we looked at the cost of Easter-themed chocolate, across a range of brands, available through an online shop at Woolworths in Auckland. Unlike Foodstuffs, Woolworths prices for packaged goods are set nationally, so wherever you are, these prices should be available to you.

Cadbury Dairy Milk: block vs egg

Up first is Cadbury. Its 100g Dairy Milk Easter egg retails for $5.00 at Woolworths. That’s easy maths: the egg-shaped chocolate costs $5.00 per 100 grams.

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

A 180g block of Cadbury Dairy Milk also retails for $5.00, but you get almost double the amount of chocolate for your money, with the chocolate in the block coming in at $2.78 per 100g.

Lindt: Excellence Extra Creamy Milk block vs Gold Bunny

If you’ve just had a promotion, or you really love your partner, maybe you’re casting your eye toward the premium chocolate options available and Lindt’s bougie bunny.

The iconic Lindt bunny weighs 100g, but at $8.90 per 100g is far more expensive than most eggs of a similar weight (whatever the brand).

If you want to buy your partner some fancy chocolate, but you don’t have Lindt bunny money, the good news is that a 100g block of Lindt Excellence Extra Creamy Milk chocolate retails for a much more sensible $4.80 per 100g. Sadly, it doesn’t come with a bow or a bell.

Nestle Milkybar: block vs bunny

Nestle’s Milkybar bunny is adorable, but is also daylight robbery, with 88g of white chocolate setting you back $8.00. That’s $9.09 per 100g of chocolate – even more than the Lindt bunny. It’s also more than three times the price of the chocolate in bar form. A Milkybar block weighs 170g and costs $4.39. Much more affordable, at $2.58 per 100g, but less cute.

What about the Warehouse? Own brand: block vs egg

If you’re weighing up the relative price of a block of chocolate, you probably have an eye for a bargain. So, we also looked at the value options at both Woolworths and the Warehouse, then compared them to a Woolworths own-brand milk chocolate block. (The Warehouse doesn’t offer an own-brand block.)

Both Woolworths’, and the Warehouse’s subsidiary brand Waikato Valley’s eggs weigh in at 100g, with the Woolworths egg priced at $4.50 per 100g and the Warehouse egg coming in at $3.50 per 100g.

That makes the Waikato Valley egg the cheapest of the three Easter eggs we looked at, although pricewise it’s no match for the Woolworths Belgian Milk Chocolate block, which retails at $2.90 for 190g or $1.53 per 100g. It also means Woolworths’ own-brand egg costs almost three times more per gram than its chocolate block.

Why is shaped chocolate more expensive?

We asked Cadbury, Woolworths, Lindt and Nestle to explain the difference in pricing between their shaped Easter chocolate and traditional blocks. They told us that factors such as the nature of the Easter production run, the process of making egg-shaped chocolate, and the packaging, all contribute to the higher cost.

Cadbury said that shaped chocolates, “are more fragile than many other forms of chocolate, such as blocks. Consumers don’t like, and won’t buy, broken hollow eggs. So, packaging has to be designed to give these eggs the best possible chance of getting to shelves, and then to purchasers, in the best (egg) shape possible. In spite of best efforts, losses in production do tend to be higher, and also losses in transport.”

The relatively short-term nature of the Easter season also plays a role, Cadbury said.

“Production runs are big, but seasonal. When Easter is behind us, the eggs don’t stay on shelves the way blocks and bars do. So, while planning tries to minimise over-production as much as under-production (we’d hate folk to miss out on their treats), losses through write-offs are inevitably higher than with everyday chocolate products.”

Nestle and Lindt referenced similar factors that drive higher prices for Easter chocolate.

Woolworths did not address our questions about either its Belgian Milk Chocolate block, or its own-brand Easter egg.

Are Easter gift boxes better value?

We know Easter eggs are just part of the fun of Easter, and that for many consumers, it’s worth paying the premium once a year. But, if you still want to buy Easter eggs and save money, you can do it by avoiding gift boxes.

Take the Cadbury Creme Egg Easter gift box, for example. The gift box costs $14.00, and for that you get one traditional Easter egg and six mini Creme Eggs. All up, the gift box contains 170g of chocolate, coming to $8.24 per 100g.

However, if you buy the equivalent items separately – one 100g Cadbury egg and a 110g pack of Creme Egg Minis – you’ll spend $12.50 on 210g chocolate. So that’s $5.95 per 100g, compared to $8.24 per 100g with the gift box, and you’ll get more chocolate!

We asked Cadbury why its gift boxes cost so much more than the products when purchased separately.

It said, “Easter gift boxes, with their packaging designed for display and transport, take up more space. And space costs too. You could perhaps stack eight or so chocolate bars in the space allocated to a box the size of a medium hollow Easter egg.”

Given that you’ll be paying an increased price just for gift box packaging, and buying the equivalent items separately is likely to involve far less cardboard and plastic, you might be better off making your own bundle by buying a value egg and supplementing it with some other chocolate. That approach still provides the experience of a gift box, but at a lower price and with reduced packaging.

Where’s Whittaker’s?

Whittaker’s is notable by its absence in this article, with its chocolate kiwi now harder to find than the bird itself. Instead, the brand has produced a “choc cross bun” special edition chocolate block.

We asked Whittaker’s why it wasn’t producing shaped chocolate this year. It told us that due to constraints on housing new equipment, and the number of products it can make at once, it is not currently making shaped chocolate. It appears that, even in chocolate form, kiwi are critically endangered.