“Dubai Chocolate” Craze Sparks Global Pistachio Shortage: The Viral Trend Impacting the Nut Industry
How the viral success of Dubai’s luxury chocolate is straining the global pistachio supply and driving prices up.
Watan-“Dubai Chocolate,” a chocolate bar filled with a creamy green pistachio filling, has gained massive popularity following a wave of videos shared on social media, particularly on TikTok. But while the trend continues to boom, it’s placing pressure on the global supply of pistachios—one of its key ingredients. Some stores have already started limiting the number of bars sold per customer.
The first viral video praising the taste of the luxury “Dubai Chocolate” was posted at the end of 2023 and has since garnered over 120 million views, not counting the many videos that followed. The result has been a global shortage of pistachio nuts, which are largely grown either in the United States or Iran. Within a year, prices jumped from $7.65 to $10.30 per pound, according to the Financial Times.
Pistachios Between the U.S. and Iran
Pistachios are becoming increasingly scarce, especially after a weak harvest last year in the U.S., the world’s largest exporter. While the crop was smaller than usual, it was of higher quality and was therefore widely sold as whole nuts with their shells. This has led to further shortages in the shelled nuts used in chocolate bars. Meanwhile, Iranian producers increased their nut exports to the UAE by 40% in the six months leading up to March, compared to the previous 12 months.
The Story Behind “Dubai Chocolate”
According to The Guardian, the obsession with “Dubai Chocolate” stems from the creation of a bar that combines milk chocolate, shredded qatayef pastry, and pistachio cream filling. The bar was developed by the luxury Emirati chocolate company Fix, sold exclusively in the UAE, and is named “Can’t Get Knafeh of It”—a pun on the Arabic dessert “knafeh” and the phrase “can’t get enough of it.” Major chocolate brands like Läderach and Lindt rushed to create their own pistachio-chocolate variations but are now struggling to meet soaring global demand. Charles Gindrod, managing director of the Prestat Group, which owns several British luxury chocolate brands, told the Financial Times that the demand for pistachio chocolate bars took the industry by surprise. “It feels like it came out of nowhere,” he said. “Suddenly, it’s in every shop.”
