Chocolate University: Chocolate’s Quiet Summer

by Rene Zimbelman

If you’ve ever ordered chocolate online, chances are unfortunately high that you’ve encountered temperature issues. Shipping chocolate is no easy feat. Although chocolate companies put strict guidelines in place to ensure chocolate arrives intact and without flavor alteration, mother nature can often alter the best laid plans.

The softening point of chocolate is about 85°F (29°C) and the melting point is 93°F (34°C), not the most ideal traits for shipping to warm destinations. Even with perfect packaging, a heatwave combined with a small delivery delay can result in significantly less than perfect chocolate arriving at your doorstep.

The Art of Shipping

The best chocolate makers create efficient shipping methods that include insulated liners and cold packs, going the extra mile to keep chocolate below its melting point. If you research chocolate maker websites, you’ll find some commonalities to delivery guidelines. Because chocolate likely won’t last more than 3 days in transit, the time between order placement and delivery needs to be as short as possible.

To accommodate, most chocolate companies only ship Monday through Wednesday, avoiding the extra days thrown in the mix from weekends and national holidays. They also tend to charge a hefty premium during the warmer months to cover gel packs, dry ice, foam sheets or any other insulating material required to prevent heat from ruining the chocolate.

Poco Dolce Confections, shipping chocolate for well over a decade now, created the video below to document the process.

Despite those efforts, however, it’s often best to just skip the summer, at least July and August, for shipping chocolate. Poco Dolce wrote this important caveat on their website for anyone ordering online –

“For destinations over 75 degrees, your order may need to be held over the weekend and ship on the following Monday. When temperatures reach over 90 degrees, we will hold the order until the weather is cool enough to ship out so that the chocolates don’t melt en route.”

Yes, that might mean holding your order until September!

Indeed, even Chocolate Connoisseur is not immune. Because part of our goal with our monthly chocolate offers is to connect our readers with great chocolate at a reasonable price (one that they can’t get anywhere else), we don’t take chocolate orders in July or August either – even though we don’t directly ship any product. It’s just part of our commitment to you, our loyal readers.

The Summer Conundrum

Coping with the summer shipping hassle certainly puts a thorn in the side of chocolatiers and chocolate makers, but in spite of the extra required, the good news for chocolate companies is, according to Fortune.com, chocolate sales are still a growth driver. In fact, sales increased 24% over a five-year period in 2014 to total $21 billion in the U.S., and the market is expected to reach $25 billion by 2019.

Still, chocolate companies, especially those who primarily sell chocolate online, are struggling to find an economical way for shipping goods directly, especially because of competition from Amazon.com. They’re forced to ship bulky boxes because of insulating materials, and summer shipping gets pricey.