Natasha Khan and Kelly Cloonan, The Wall Street Journal, March 31, 2026
Just how much are 12 metric tons of stolen KitKat bars worth? A lot of promotional gold, it turns out.
It was the brazen chocolate heist heard around the social-media world: Over the weekend, Nestlé confirmed that thieves had swiped 413,793 units of KitKats somewhere along their way from a factory in central Italy to Poland. Both the chocolate bars and the truck carrying them remain missing, though no one was hurt in the theft, it said.
What the Swiss company lost in chocolate, though, it gained back in a public-relations coup—as did multiple other companies quick to hop on the meme bandwagon….
Trying to juice a rival’s bad news for buzz isn’t advisable if it’s something as serious as an oil spill or a plane crash. But weighing in on an international chocolate-bar caper is pretty low-risk, said Davia Temin, the founder of reputation and crisis management consultancy Temin and Company.
“It’s chocolate, it’s Easter,” Temin said. “I don’t think you can go too wrong.” […read more]