9 Dark chocolate
The aforementioned influx of brands from all around the globe to the region has proliferated choices offered to the consumer, diversifying tastes away from the popular milk chocolate products.

Although milk chocolate continues to dominate the market, consumers are discovering dark chocolate en-masse – and the cocoa percentage of dark chocolate products now serves as a handy quality scale for consumers.

“Having been in the Middle East for more than three decades, we’ve seen the trend for dark chocolate develop slowly, but recently growth for dark chocolate has been much more substantial,” explains EMF Emirates general manager, Pierre Feghali.

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“If we look specifically at the Gulf area, milk chocolate constituted almost 90% of the chocolate market a decade ago and dark chocolate was almost exclusively requested by five-star hotels to meet the needs of expats and tourists. Today, we see more and more chocolatiers requesting dark chocolate, although it is still small compared to milk.”
Tastes are changing; and dark chocolate is in vogue.

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