CZK 94.90. Tesco and Albert beat Switzerland, the Czechs are not happy

Anyone who decided to buy sweets for the Santa Claus gift at the last minute this year may be in for a terrible surprise when they look at the prices of some sweets in supermarkets. Customers are noticing unusually high prices for Orion’s Student Seal chocolate, which is currently being sold for more than the price of chocolate directly in Switzerland. The Tesco and Albert chains have therefore surpassed Switzerland, but the Czechs are not happy. While the Swiss Cailler chocolate costs less than CZK 110 per 200 grams in the Alpine country, only 170 grams of Student Seal is currently sold in Czech stores for CZK 94.90. You can get Czech chocolate, which many customers rechristened the “Bourgeois seal”, for almost half the price in Poland.

While last year, due to the energy crisis, the “lucky” could be counted among those who received coal from the devil as part of the Santa Claus gift, this year the situation is returning to normal and most children will rather expect a package of small sweets on the eve of St. Nicholas’s Day. However, they are currently becoming more expensive than usual, and those who decided to buy their little ones some snacks at the last minute or just got a taste for something sweet for themselves, may regret this step at the cash register these days.

The Student seal from Orion can certainly be included among the regulars of Santa Claus gifts in the Czech Republic. For this milk chocolate with peanuts, jelly and raisins for example, the Tesco supermarket attracts customerswith a caption claiming that “delicious milk chocolate has a surprise inside” and recommends that you share this confection “with everyone you want to put a smile on their face.”

It should be noted that if you do so, you should think twice beforehand about who to share with and who not – you must not want to bring a “smile on the face” to too many people, as it is only a 170 gram package, which too many smiles it no longer enchants precisely with its size.

However, as customers confirm, the words about “surprise” really apply, and this is not an inflated phrase. Only the surprise is not caused by the inside of the chocolate, but rather by the price tag under it on the shelf and some people have already seen typical Czech sweets recently they don’t say “Student”but the “Bourgeois Seal”.

One of the commenters on social networks, who went to Tesco and found this snack on the shelf for CZK 94.90, also pointed out that the Student Seal “has nothing to do with students” and “they can immediately rename it to a higher class seal”. And that for 170 grams.

The price of Nutella is one thing, but the classic 170g Student Seal for CZK 95!?!? They can just rename it to a higher class seal, because it has nothing to do with students?? pic.twitter.com/3Q3IBkJVvJ

— Sváťa Barek ???? (@BarekSvata) December 4, 2023

This is not a mistake or fad of one of the chains, but the “regular” price for which you can currently buy this milk chocolate. A 170-gram package for such money will cost, for example, even in Alberta.

If we convert the price per kilogram, then believe me that a kilo of this chocolate with at least 27 percent cocoa solids content in milk chocolate is over 558 crowns, and if you buy two 170-gram packages, you will immediately leave 190 crowns at the cash register – that is, the amount you would pay for elsewhere they also had lunch or some more luxurious Swiss chocolate.

At the same time, some customers are thinking more about buying one of the Swiss brands, which are cheaper and larger, at the current price. So, for example, milk – but also bitter up to 85 percent – Lindt chocolate in Tesco costs 84.90 CZK per 100 grams, but with the local Clubcard loyalty card it is already only 44.90 CZK, which is less than what you pay for the aforementioned Student Seal. which, by the way, is produced by Orion, whose parent company is the Swiss multinational Nestlé.

That it is cheaper to buy chocolate in Switzerland is also confirmed by the price tag of Cailler chocolate in the local Coop, where it costs 4.25 Swiss francs, which is converted to less than 110 crowns for a 200-gram package – a kilogram of this very tasty chocolate, produced near Lake Geneva in the foothills Alp, you can get it even in Switzerland cheaper than the Student seal here.

In ???? we have this from Nestle, 110 CZK, 200g. Ingredients: sugar, cocoa mass, hazelnuts 9.5%, cocoa butter, almonds 8.5%, candied blueberries 6.5%, emulsifier (sunflower lecithin), natural Madagascar vanilla flavor. And now the composition of the Seal… ???? the advice is – don’t buy ???? pic.twitter.com/MLFSn6WrES

— Petr Gola (@GolaPetr) December 4, 2023

“The student seal is an insult to chocolate (and it doesn’t matter how much it costs),” said one of the women about the Czech sweet, and some chocolate lovers added that “the seal may have just been lying next to the chocolate for a while, waiting for emulsifiers, sugar and palm oil”. However, there were also those who, on the contrary, prefer the Student Seal and defended it, saying that it is precisely because of the emulsifiers, sugar and palm oil that “it is so good”.

People commented on the price tag showing CZK 94.90 for a 170-gram package, saying that it is “a perfect example of a trap for customers who don’t study the leaflets”. “At a glance for a kilo, but every other week on sale for 35. An incredibly annoying practice. In my opinion, it could never have happened that it couldn’t be found in a chain for around 35,” pointed out one of the discussants on the social network X and substantiated everything with a sample of prices from discount events, during which the said chocolate will cost 35.90 CZK .

At the same time, according to many customers, according to the discussion on social networks, this is a price that they consider to be “regular” and in no way a promotional price. “They’ve been overshooting that price for a long time. Besides, they almost always have it on ‘sale’ for 35. And this is not the only product where they practice this,” another commenter shared his observation.

The price tag and size of the Student Seal shocked not only the customers themselves, but also the Prime Minister’s advisor Petr Fiala and BH Securities Chief Economist Štěpán Křeček. “I thought that the classic Student seal had 200 grams…” was not enough to surprise the economist, who is probably not looking for the mentioned sweet snack too much, because, as people pointed out to him in the discussion, it just did not avoid the phenomenon called “smrskflation” – that is, the gradual shrinking of the packaging , which customers will not notice at first glance as much as the price increase itself.

I thought the classic Student Seal was 200 grams…

— Štěpán Křeček (@stepankrecek) December 4, 2023

While in the Czech Republic a 170-gram package of the Student Seal costs CZK 94.90, according to one of the buyers, you can currently get a larger 260-gram package in Poland for less than 14 zlotys, which translates to less than CZK 79.

And if you’d like to save money on the Santa gift this year, you’d better avoid other Orion products, according to customer reviews. A chocolate bar shaped like a carp and wrapped in gold foil from this brand can cost as much as CZK 1,069 per kilo in Alberta. The goldfish itself costs CZK 44.90 for 42 grams of milk chocolate. Looking at it, the taste of many a sweet lover would come.

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