120m views on TikTok: Dubai chocolate triggers pistachio shortage

Published: 21 April 2025

Agencies
Dubai

Product promotion on TikTok is now powerful enough to influence the vast agricultural economies of the US and Iran – at least when it comes to the consump­tion of high-end confectionery. A chocolate bar stuffed with a creamy green pistachio filling has become incredibly popular after a series of video clips shared on TikTok, The Guardian reports. The first bit of footage prais­ing the taste of the expensive so-called “Dubai chocolate” was posted at the end of 2023 and has now been viewed more than 120m times, to say nothing of the many follow-up videos.

The result has been an inter­national shortage of the vital ingredient, pistachio -kernels, which are largely grown in ei­ther the US or Iran. In a year, prices have surged from $7.65 to $10.30 a pound, Giles Hack­ing, from nut trader CG Hack­ing, told the Financial Times. The nut was already becoming scarce due to last year’s poor har­vest in the US, the world’s leading exporter.

This has created a further shortage of the basic kernels used in the chocolate bars. Iranian producers, meanwhile, had exported 40% more nuts to the UAE in the six months to March than they had in the 12 months prior to that. Dubai chocolate mania can be sourced to the creation of a bar that combined milk chocolate, the shredded pastry known as kataifi, and a pistachio cream fill­ing.

Made by the swish Emirati chocolatier Fix, which only sells in the UAE, it was prophetically given the punning name Can’t Get Knafeh of It, in reference to a traditional Arab dessert. Other leading chocolate mak­ers, such as Läderach and Lindt, quickly created their own pista­chio ¬chocolate products, but are now struggling to meet interna­tional demand.