Cadbury makes major change to Chocolate Buttons – and shoppers are fuming
CADBURY has made a major change to its Dairy Milk Chocolate Buttons and customers are not happy about it.
The confectionary company has made sharing bags of the sweets smaller – but kept the price the same.
Previously the chocs weighed in at 240g and cost £2 at Asda and Tesco.
But a new size is just 184.4g and will still set you back the same amount at the supermarkets, The Grocer reports.
It means shoppers are getting almost a quarter less than before.
It comes after the company shrunk the size of its chocolate Easter eggs too, as was first revealed by The Sun.
The move is known as “shrinkflation”, which is when a product get smaller but the price doesn’t change.
The tactic is used by companies to avoid putting prices up, and often shoppers don’t realise they are getting less.
Mondelez International, which owns Cadbury, blamed the shrinking of the buttons on the rising cost of energy and ingredients.
A spokesperson said: “We understand that consumers are faced with rising costs too, which is why we look to absorb costs wherever we can, but, in this difficult environment, we’ve had to make the decision to reduce the weight of our large sharing bags to remain competitive.
The company said that it offers “a range of sizes and price points to choose from” and that shops can set their own prices.
Shoppers have been taking to Twitter in the last few days to share their anger at the move.
One person said: “If it feels like the bag doesn’t last as long it’s because it doesn’t! Shrinkflation sucks.”
Meanwhile, another disgruntled choccie fan, tagging Dairy Milk, added: “Have you reduced the Cadbury Buttons.
“Big share bag size from 240g to 184.8g????”
Cadbury isn’t the only company to shrink the size of its products to keep up with rising manufacturing costs.
Pouches of popular supermarket item Ben’s original rice have shrunk from 250g to 220g in recent months.
Mars, which manufactures the rice, said it had made the product smaller due to “significant cost increases”.
Other products including beer have shrunk in size in recent months without a change in price either.
It comes as food prices soared by 16.8% in the year to December, with basics such as milk, cheese and eggs seeing the largest increases.
The Sun approached Tesco and Asda for a comment.