KitKat bars may be hard to come by in Europe for the Easter Bunny this year after thieves stole a massive 12-ton shipment of the popular “crunch” version of the product this week.
Owned by the Swiss and U.S. food giant Nestlé, the cargo contained in “a truck transporting 413,793 units” was stolen “during transit in Europe,” the company announced Saturday.
At a conservative retail price of $2.50, this computes to a loss of more than $1 million in sales, or $868,000 in euros.
Reportedly, the truck left a factory in central Italy and was on its way to Poland when it was grabbed.
“We’ve always encouraged people to have a break with KitKat,” a spokesperson told news outlets, evoking its advertising catchphrase. “But it seems thieves have taken the message too literally and made a break with more than 12 tons of our chocolate.”
“Investigations are ongoing in close collaboration with local authorities and supply chain partners,” the company representative said.
The truck and its contents, however, still remain unaccounted for.
Nestlé warned that the missing chocolate bars may lead to a shortage of KitKats appearing on shelves ahead of the Easter holiday, which could result in some sad faces among children expecting KitKats in their Easter baskets.
The chocolate booty could also end up being peddled on the black distribution market, though the company said it would be able to trace their product by the batch codes found on each package.
This is not the first time KitKat became the hot item for a big cargo theft.
About $250,000 worth of the chocolate wafer candies were snatched about three years ago, the Sun reported.
“The shipment of 55,000 Kit Kats from Japan included rare flavors like melon, matcha latte, and daifuku mochi,” according to the tabloid.
The shipment landed in California and was trucked about 30 miles across Los Angeles County to a temporary storage facility east of the city.
However, it failed to make the final leg of its journey to a warehouse in New Jersey.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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