HOUSTON—At Three Brothers Bakery in southwest Houston, what can take seconds to devour is often hours in the making.
"A lot of people just really love our chocolate cake," said owner Bobby Jucker.
Their chocolate cake has been made with the same ingredients for 50 years, but one ingredient in particular is increasingly precious and difficult to come by.
"We use a lot of cocoa," said Jucker. "And it’s very, very expensive and plays a big part in our business, because people like chocolate."
Bobby Jucker grew worried when the delivery time for cocoa went from a three-day wait to a three-month wait. There’s also the price.
"It went up 60 percent, and I knew there was a problem," Jucker said.
The problem, he said, is speculators.
"Cocoa is a commodity," said general manager Thomas Baker. "So there are some speculators out there who’ve been buying it up, storing it, keeping it off the market and waiting for the prices to really climb and turning a huge profit."
Last month alone, a London-Based hedge fund snatched up 7 percent of the world’s annual cocoa bean production for $1 billion, sending prices soaring and prompting calls for more regulation."
"They decided to jump onboard and make a bunch of money off little guys like us because they can," said Jucker.
If prices continue to soar, he said he might as well be sprinkling gold dust instead of cocoa powder in his cherished recipes.
Three Brothers Bakery hasn’t had to increase prices in two years, but they said they may have to consider doing so again in the near future.
