Dear Somadosers,

Before we discuss boring things, let us begin with our thrilling news: our Mexican and Solomon Islands cacaos came back into stock this week, which means that for the first time since Christmas, we have a full house of Soma Cacaos!

It’s not quite true to say this only happens once in a blue moon, but it’s not very often the stars align, the floods recede, the coups abate, and customs open for long enough for us to have all our Somas available together. We will be enjoying ourselves thoroughly for as long as this blessed state of affairs lasts.

Now I must wriggle my way towards price rises, but before I hit you with numbers (which really aren’t that bad), I would like to share/re-share/overshare our philosophy on this:

Alistair and I met on a beach in Mexico. For several years we lived together in a flat that was smaller than most people’s living rooms. Those were also some of the richest years of our lives. We had the sun and the sea and friends and each other and music and cacao and so much yoga. At some point I think we both realised that this world is full to overflowing with riches, and there is more than enough to go around. It is the most miraculous thing in the world when the nameless fear unclenches inside you, and you realise you’re not afraid. I wish everyone could experience it, and I certainly wish every business owner knew, because then business stops being a frantic cash-grab, and becomes a whirligig of creative giving, where everyone wins.

Even today, we’re still getting photos from people who got free cacao in our Christmas giveaway. At the time we thought we’d gone a bit overboard with how many gifts we’d given away, and I still doubt it was a prudent commercial decision, but all the photos we get of families we half-know (through emails) smiling with cups of our cacao makes us feel extremely rich.

We stand at the middle of a web of farmers, chocolatiers, suppliers and customers, trying to balance everyone’s interests. This is certainly not the case throughout our industry. Many of you will know that cacao commodity prices rose dramatically in 2024; few of you will know they have more than halved since then, because big chocolate companies are not passing the savings on. At the same time, they have arranged to cut the prices paid to farmers in West Africa (many of whom already live in poverty) and are now filling their chocolate bars with all sorts of synthetic sludge, and it’s just a nasty mess.

We pay 10x to 20x commodity price for our cacaos, so even when commodity prices shot up, our costs were only modestly affected. We made some modest savings when prices went down last year, which we passed on by reducing the price of our Peruvian and Solomon Islands Cacaos. That was part of our last price adjustment, which was at the start of 2025 (we made a one-off change to our Daintree prices late last year after our supplier passed away and we re-negotiated a price directly with Farmer John).

We aim to never increase prices by more than the cost of a cup of coffee (we were in Sydney over Mother’s Day and realised just how expensive a decaf is there - so we clarify: never more than the cost of a flat white at South Mission Beach’s Bowerbird Cafe). We have managed that this year: from the first of July, there will be a $5 increase in the price of a 500g bag of Peruvian, Solomon Islands, and Mexican cacao, a $2 increase in the price of a 500g bag of Karkar Island cacao, and a $1 increase for Daintree. The price of our Ecuadorian cacao, which only hit the shelves in December, remains the same.

Obviously, it’s not just cacao we have to pay for - our packaging and energy costs are increasing faster than inflation. Gratefully our landlord Roger remains a great guy, so our rent is reasonably steady. Shipping has been a mess in the last year, so our logistics costs have gone up. Australia Post has been particularly brutal with its price increases. Operating out of Far North Queensland, we don’t have any other options for couriering, so we have absorbed the Australia Post price hikes into our margins. There have been two in the last year, and there’s talk of another 8% price increase sometime next year. At the moment we pay Australia Post 15% more for shipping than our customers pay us (ie if you pay $9.95 for postage we’re paying about $11.50) - we’re happy for that to continue, but we will increase our shipping price in line with the 4-5% increase Australia Post will be applying from July 1.

We’ll include a neat and concise table of price changes below. None of these changes will come into effect until the first of July, so if you want to stock up at current prices, you have until the end of June. That gives you a full month with a full house of all six Soma Cacaos.

With date syrup and vanilla,

Rose, Alistair, and the team at Soma Cacao