Ask a craft chocolate maker about their bars, and you’ll hear about cacao percentage, bean origin and roast time. What you won’t hear much about is milk chocolate, even though it outsells everything else on the shelf. For more than 15 years, craft chocolate’s whole pitch ran through dark bars, like the candy most people actually buy wasn’t worth the same care. On National Milk Chocolate Day, that’s finally changing.
Walk into most craft chocolate shops, and the dark bars carry the whole sourcing story on the label. The milk chocolate next to them rarely gets the same treatment. That gap holds even on July 28, when National Milk Chocolate Day gives the category its one dedicated day on the calendar.
The numbers back it up
Chocolate made up 51.7% of every dollar spent on candy last year, in a category that hit $55 billion in sales. Milk chocolate is America’s favorite, across every generation of shoppers.
That’s held true even through two rough years for cocoa. Prices spiked to historic highs in 2024, and the price of cocoa has been swinging hard ever since, squeezing every maker who buys raw beans.
With beans costing more, the dark chocolate pitch got easier to make. A higher cacao percentage already justified a higher price tag, and now the beans behind it cost more, too. Milk chocolate, made with less cocoa mass, never got that same boost.
Fruition Chocolate Works treats milk chocolate like the real deal
Not every maker skipped milk chocolate. Fruition Chocolate Works, a small chocolate maker based in Shokan, New York, ties its milk bars to a named cacao origin, the same way it does with its dark ones. One bar, the Dominican Nacional Dark Milk 68%, was the only finalist named in the plain milk chocolate category at the 2024 International Chocolate Awards Americas competition.
Making milk chocolate well isn’t the easy version of dark, either. The cacao still has to come through once it’s mixed with dairy and sugar. A rushed process or weak dairy gives it away fast.
Next time you’re browsing a craft chocolate shelf, don’t skip past the milk bar with an origin on the label. It took the industry 15 years to catch up to what most shoppers already knew. Give one a try and see what the fuss is about.
Jennifer Allen is a retired professional chef and long-time writer. Her work appears in dozens of publications, including MSN, Yahoo, The Washington Post and The Seattle Times. These days, she’s busy in the kitchen developing recipes and traveling the world, and you can find all her best creations at Cook What You Love.