I’ve tried the real thing, I’ve tried the fakes, I’ve tried the chocolate and knafeh-coated strawberries that cost more than a week’s rent, I’ve tried Dubai chocolate ice cream in Notting Hill and just when I thought it was all over, yesterday, when all I wanted was a normal brownie, the only available brownie on offer was a Dubai chocolate pistachio knafeh brownie -platinum gluttony coated in melted chocolate and pistachio sauce. I think we are all tired of Dubai chocolate. The fakes rarely taste good, pistachio-flavoured everything is thrown into our faces wherever we go, and our trend-chasing generation is getting scammed out of our money (once again). Nevertheless, while I was sitting there in that dessert shop, contemplating my life choices and the extra £2 that made a normal brownie Dubai-chocolate flavoured, I started to question the impact of this craze on global economies. There’s a reason why Dubai chocolate, aside from its advertisement as a luxury product, has to be priced so high. Its raw ingredients have become a nightmare for margins. Just like we saw with the soaring obsession with matcha (guilty as charged), viral food and drink crazes can strain supply and trigger ingredient shortages. But what happens when a single dessert commands so much global attention that it goes beyond depleting shelves, fundamentally reshaping supply chains and disrupting entire markets? We find ourselves with a cult following for, well, none other than a chocolate bar.
From Gold Bars to Chocolate Bars
Dubai, as well as the UAE in general, has long held the title of a global luxury destination; a hub for opulent goods and gold-plated decadence, Dubai leads in tourism, goods and experience sectors.
Now, Dubai has mastered a new market. Luxury chocolate. What started out as a local treat, born in the kitchen of British-Egyptian entrepreneur Sarah Hamouda, founder of FIX Dessert Chocolatier in Dubai, is now expanding internationally, generating new business prospects, and revolutionising the local economy. By assisting the UAE in establishing itself as an essential player in the global chocolate market, it has drawn foreign producers and investors to establish operations in the area. The chocolate bar phenomenon has had a significant impact on Dubai’s local economy. Chocolatiers in Dubai are expanding their production, recruiting more experienced staff, and starting new companies in response to the growing demand for their handcrafted chocolates. As a result of the trend, numerous local startups have appeared to serve the expanding market. Dubai’s retail industry is boosted by the growth of chocolate-related enterprises as more shops and boutiques set aside sections for these high-end chocolate bars.
As the story goes, the idea for the chocolate bar originated from Hamouda’s pregnancy cravings. While pregnant in 2021, the hungry entrepreneur found herself craving the traditional Middle Eastern taste of knafeh. So in her kitchen, she combined silky pistachio cream, earthy tahini and crunchy shards of knafeh pastry into a decadent milk chocolate bar, naming it the ‘Can’t Get Knafeh Of It’ bar, and what we now know as Dubai Chocolate was officially born.
The demand went viral. Dubai chocolate’s pistachio-based core has made the ingredient a global craze. Wholesale customers started acquiring kernels in greater quantities, which led to unanticipated competition between sectors that don’t normally interact, such as large-scale food manufacturers and boutique dessert makers.
This was less dessert launch and more digital detonation.
TikTok influencers filmed ASMR taste tests of the bar and slow-mos of them breaking into the chocolate, revealing the pistachio cream and crackling knafeh inside. Suddenly, people in London, New York and Istanbul were desperate for a chocolate bar that technically wasn’t available to them. When the original couldn’t scale fast enough, the market did what markets do: it improvised. Worldwide, chocolatiers tried to experiment with their own ‘Dubai-style’ chocolate. Major brands, such as Lindt and Ülker, tried to join the party, racing to beat (or simply match) the original bar to meet global demand.
FIX Dessert’s bar was rich, textured and unavoidably green, handmade and handpainted with strokes of colour on each one. And, most crucially for the chocolate creation, it was scarce. FIX releases around 500 of the original ‘Can’t Get Knafeh Of It’ bars a day in the UAE, sold in limited online drops, at 2 pm and 5 pm through ordering on Deliveroo in the UAE. They sell out almost instantly. Fear of missing out is brought on by the restricted availability, both geographically and temporally, which has raised demand and interest even more.
“Although Dubai chocolate’s instant growth has been fuelled largely by social media, the exclusivity of the original bar has kept the interest going,” expressed Monique Naval, senior research analyst at Euromonitor International.
What began as a local luxury treat became a global category. And then the pistachios ran out…
The Pistachio Problem
Dubai chocolate is not subtle about its filling. It is pistachio-forward. Aggressively pistachio-forward. Unfortunately, pistachio trees are unresponsive to TikTok trends.
California produces roughly 63% of the world’s pistachios. The state, which produces the majority of the world’s pistachios, had just come off a poor harvest in 2024. Meanwhile, global demand was skyrocketing. Commodity analysts claim that farming cycles and weather weren’t the only factors at play here. Timing was also a factor. The chocolate bar’s appeal clashed with an already strained supply chain, intensifying shortages that were already starting to appear. Wholesale prices reportedly surged from $7.65 to $10.30 per pound within a year, Giles Hacking, from nut trader CG Hacking, told the Financial Times. The UAE increased pistachio imports from Iran by around 40% over a six-month period. Turkish suppliers hit capacity. Retailers began rationing chocolate bars. There were even reports of people smuggling them in suitcases.
The Financial Times, The Guardian, and other publications have now called Dubai chocolate a market disruptor. Not because it overflowed stores, but rather because it went viral just as global supply was becoming more scarce. As a result, the demand curve shifted more quickly than the system could adjust. This was more than just a fad for food producers, farmers, and exporters. It turned into an example of how digital culture can increase demand, put pressure on agricultural systems, and change the economics of once-stable ingredients. At least when it comes to the consumption of upscale confections, product advertising on TikTok is now strong enough to affect the immense agricultural economies of Iran and the United States.
And because pistachios are also used in gelato, baklava, pastries and nut butters, the ripple effect spread quickly. Suddenly, that elegant green scoop in your cone came with a slightly less elegant price tag. As one industry analyst put it, the pistachio market wasn’t built to handle this kind of fame.
From an economic perspective, Dubai chocolate has become a mini global assembly. West Africa is a common source of cocoa. Pistachios are sourced from Turkey, Iran and America. China may produce the packaging. Shipping lanes traverse continents. Tariffs drive up prices. Delivery is slowed by port congestion. Climate change makes things more unpredictable. Demand spikes occurring overnight have an impact on the entire system. So what is the outcome? Farm-level costs increase, but by the time they reach the consumer, logistics, trade regulations, and branding tactics have increased prices too. To preserve margins, chocolatiers rely on luxury positioning, which includes artisanal boxes, premium pricing, and limited batches. In other words, the atmosphere becomes even more exclusive when pricey pistachios come into play.
In a trend-driven market, businesses are now turning to AI forecasting tools to monitor social media buzz and anticipate demand surges. If an influencer raves about pistachio cream at 9 am, manufacturers would quite like to know by 9:05. Agriculture, however, still operates on seasons, soil and sunlight, not algorithms. A single bar, born in a Dubai kitchen, managed to weave its way through Californian orchards, Iranian exporters, European supermarkets and international pricing charts. In the age of TikTok, the most powerful driver of global trade may not be policy, production or even politics.
It might just be a really good filling.
[This all has taken a pretty light note, but if, like me, you are interested in reading about important ethical reservations associated with Dubai chocolate, I highly recommend reading Alex Skopic’s article: ‘Dubai Chocolate is Regime Propaganda’, for Current Affairs, which importantly touches on the UAE’s associations with questionable human rights and ties to the Sudanese Genocide! For more on that, you can also check out my HerCampus article on the UAE and Sudan. Stay educated, kids xx]