Godiva to close all 128 chocolate stores in North America, citing decline in shoppers due to pandemic

Chocolatier Godiva will be shuttering its 128 store and café locations across North America at the end of March, the company announced Sunday, citing a decrease in demand for in-person shopping during the pandemic.

“They lost between half their business which is done due to tourists, the other 25 percent of the business which is done due to special occasion, and another 25 percent which is done to impulse,” Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst at the NPD Group market research company, told NBC News.

Godiva is one of the hundreds of thousands of store closures that have come amid a massive decline in in-person shopping during the pandemic.

According to Adobe Analytics, online shopping hit nearly $200 billion during the holiday shopping season alone