Essex chocolatier speaks out on rising costs for energy and packaging
Costs of their packaging have doubled
A local chocolatier is warning customers to expect their products to cost more in the new year, as the company copes with rising production costs.
Temprd is a family-owned chocolate making business located in Maldon. They launched during lockdown after struggling to "find the chocolate they wanted to eat or gift".
They say they've managed to absorb all costs so far, but won't be able to if prices continue to rise.
Carla Watkins, Temprd's marketing manager, told us how they're coping: "We're doing okay, but it's been interesting.
"Because we launched over lockdown, we haven't had a normal year - we'd love to know what a normal year looks like for!
"With the cost-of-living crisis, we've been very lucky that our energy bills haven't yet risen because they're part of our overall rent bill. I'm sure at some point we'll feel that impact but at the moment we haven't felt it."
Carla continued: "Excluding our energy bills pretty much everything else has gone up, from packaging, to the boxes we use, to our ingredients. We have held our prices, and we will do until Christmas, but we will have to revisit in the new year, because everything is just so much more expensive...
"Some of our packaging has more than doubled in price... We expected some rises, because you just do as a business, and we planned for some, but this particular set of crisis costings has been a lot."
Whilst the cost-of-living crisis continues, Carla says she's trying to find a small silver lining: "People say that when the world is falling apart, lipstick sales go up because it's a small luxury people can still afford.
"I'm hoping we can be that small luxury - that would be really nice."
They have noticed the crisis is impacting people's orders: "We've definitely noticed a decrease in the average value of an order, compared to last year, but we're doing okay... "It would just be really nice if prices could stop going up and level out now!"
Despite the rising costs, Carla is staying cautiously optimistic: "We started our business because we wanted to make people happy and chocolate makes people happy.
"We want to continue making people happy - we are very determined bunch, so we stay not just cautiously optimistic, but just outright optimistic. It's a tough climate out there but we will do our best to keep bringing people chocolate and joy."