Chocolate softens above about 30 °C, and couriers do not run refrigerated vehicles. Between May and September a parcel can sit in a truck or a depot well above that.
This is the honest version of how summer shipping works in Canada, what we do about it, and what you can do to make it a non-issue.
What actually happens in a hot truck
A delivery van in July sits in direct sun for hours. Interior temperatures routinely pass 40 °C. Depot floors are not much better, and a parcel that arrives Friday afternoon may not move again until Monday.
Chocolate does not spoil at those temperatures. It softens, the cocoa butter migrates to the surface, and when it cools it re-sets in unstable crystal forms — a dull greyish film called bloom. The chocolate is safe and it re-tempers normally, but it will not look the way it did when it left us.
What we do
From May through September we ship in insulated boxes with gel cold packs where the forecast at the destination requires it. We check the forecast, not the calendar — a cool week in June does not need the same packaging as a heat wave in August.
Insulation buys time. On a one to three day transit within Ontario it is usually enough. Across four to seven days to British Columbia in high summer, it helps but it is not a guarantee, and we will not pretend otherwise.
Where your chocolate sits before it ships
Our Concord warehouse is climate controlled year round. Chocolate arrives from Barry Callebaut in sealed manufacturer packaging and stays that way until it ships.
The risk in summer is the last leg, not the storage.
Four things you can do
Order early in the week. Monday and Tuesday orders move before the weekend. A Thursday order to a distant province can spend Saturday and Sunday in a depot.
Collect in person if you can. Free pickup from Concord removes the entire risk and costs nothing. In the GTA in July, this is simply the better choice.
Be there on delivery day. A box left on a doorstep in afternoon sun is worse than the truck. If you cannot be there, have it held at a depot for collection instead.
Bring it inside immediately. Get it into a cool room the moment it arrives.
When it arrives
Do not open the box straight away if it feels warm. Let it come to room temperature sealed, over a few hours. Opening a warm box into humid air causes condensation on the chocolate, and condensation causes sugar bloom — which, unlike fat bloom, cannot be fixed.
Do not refrigerate it. Same reason. The fridge is the most common cause of unfixable bloom in home and small kitchens.
Then store normally: sealed, 12–20 °C, dry, away from light and strong odours.
If it arrives soft or bloomed
Nothing is wasted. What changes is only what you can use it for.
- Melting, ganache, mousse, baking, ice cream — no impact at all. The bloom disappears the moment it melts.
- Re-tempering for moulding or enrobing — works normally. Melt fully to 45 °C and temper as usual. The gloss comes back.
- Selling as a finished piece, as-is — the appearance is not saleable, though the flavour is unaffected.
If chocolate arrives fully liquid, badly leaked, or the packaging is damaged, that is different. Email us within 48 hours with photographs and we will sort it out.
When not to order
This costs us sales to say, but it is the right advice.
If the forecast at your address is above 30 °C for the transit window, and the order is for finished pieces where appearance matters — a wedding, a display, a boxed gift range — wait for a cooler week or arrange pickup.
If the chocolate is going into ganache, batter or ice cream, order whenever you like. Heat is irrelevant to those applications.
Planning around the season
Bakeries that work with chocolate through the summer tend to do two things: buy a little heavier in spring while transit is cool, and shift moulding and enrobing work to early mornings when the kitchen itself is coolest.
Ambient kitchen temperature matters as much as shipping. Above roughly 22 °C, tempered chocolate sets slowly and unevenly no matter how well it travelled.
Related reading
- Why chocolate blooms and how to prevent it — the two kinds, and which one re-tempers away
- How to temper chocolate: the 45–27–31 method — bringing the gloss back
Not sure whether to order this week? Email us and we will look at the forecast for your address with you. Antalia Wholesale is an authorized Canadian distributor of the Barry Callebaut Group — Callebaut, Cacao Barry and Van Leer. Free pickup from Concord, Ontario, year round.
