Posting chocolate yourself or letting the house ship it

Yes, bpost accepts chocolate: it appears on no list of prohibited items. The real question lies elsewhere. On almost every destination, the postage costs more than the shipping charged by the house that would sell you the same ballotin. Both calculations fit in one table.

Can you send chocolate by post?

Yes.

bpost publishes the list of what it refuses in plain terms: dangerous goods, drugs, weapons, counterfeits, banknotes, valuable jewellery. Foodstuffs are not on it. Nor is chocolate.

The blockage comes from the arrival country, never from the contents of the parcel. And it comes from temperature, which interests no administration but decides everything, because a ballotin posted on the economy service sometimes takes five days to cross Europe and nobody, neither you nor the carrier, knows what temperature it spent them at.

I learned that the hard way. A 500 gram ballotin posted to a friend living in Lisbon, on 3 July this year, on the economy service because the price gap struck me as absurd. It arrived seven days later, as a single block, the pralines welded to one another. She photographed it before throwing it out, and I keep the photo as a reminder.

How much does a parcel of chocolate cost at bpost?

The 2026 residential rates are public, and they read in three lines.

Inside Belgium, a 0 to 2 kg parcel sent to an address costs €7.10 with a label created online, €8.60 if you buy it at the counter. Abroad, the Standard offer, the one that includes tracking and an indemnity, starts at €16.50 to Germany, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, rises to €34.60 for the rest of the European Union, €37.20 for the rest of Europe, €55.00 to the United States and Canada, and €74.40 for the rest of the world.

The Economy offer also exists, capped at 2 kg, with no tracking and no indemnity: €11.60 to neighbouring countries, €13.75 to the rest of the Union, €16.10 to the rest of Europe, €19.30 to the United States, €28.70 elsewhere. That is the one I had taken for Lisbon.

Add the cardboard. A bpost Standard Small box, 230 by 155 by 74 millimetres, sells for €2.29 apiece at the post office, and a 500 gram ballotin fits inside without forcing.

bpost against the house: the table of 18 September

I put the two columns side by side on 18 September 2026. On one side the bpost Standard rate for a 0 to 2 kg parcel, label created online. On the other, the shipping charges published by Neuhaus on its Order and Shipping page, country by country. Same destination, same week, same weight of chocolate in the box.

Not one line leans the right way.

The bpost rate in the left column is bare: it includes neither the box, nor the packing paper, nor any insulation, and it does not include the twenty minutes of queueing at the counter on a Saturday morning either. The right column includes the chilled packaging the house adds as soon as the season demands it, and the shipping drops to zero above €60 of order. On a 350 gram ballotin at €36.75, the real gap to London therefore approaches thirty-five euros.

The cheapest shipping to London is sold by a chocolatier, not by the post office.

One reservation, because it matters. Those €7 are not a gift: they are funded by the chocolate. A kilo of Neuhaus pralines was worth €105.00 in the survey of 7 September 2026, against €41.80 at Leonidas, to the cent across every size. Cheap shipping is paid for upstream, and the house will not let you choose your delivery date either: its own answers page says so without hedging.

Great Britain rules out fresh cream pralines

Since April 2025, Great Britain has banned personal imports of dairy products from the European Union. Chocolate gets through. Not all of it.

The official British government list admits chocolate and confectionery except those containing a lot of unprocessed dairy ingredients, and cakes only on condition that they carry no fresh cream. A ganache whipped with cream, which is to say half of any honest Brussels ballotin, falls squarely in that grey zone. In principle, an officer who opens the parcel may set it aside.

In practice nobody opens every parcel, and I know of no ballotin ever seized. The risk is not zero for all that, and it sits entirely with you.

The houses ship on the commercial route, which does not follow personal import rules. Neuhaus delivers to the United Kingdom for €7, level with Germany, its lowest rate outside Belgium.

What happens at United States customs?

Two administrations, two logics, and one recent change that costs money.

bpost warns on its page devoted to shipments to the United States that the exemption for parcels under 800 dollars has gone. Every shipment is now liable to duty, all import charges have to be settled before dispatch, and the label must carry a clear description of each item, the HS code and the country of origin. Incomplete information means a delay or a return.

On the food safety side, the FDA prior notice covers in principle any foodstuff entering by post. Food made at home and sent as a personal gift is exempt, and the agency states that it generally takes no action over a missing notice when one individual sends another individual food bought in a shop. For a ballotin from the Grand-Place, you are covered without being exempt.

That leaves the CN23, compulsory the moment you leave the Union. I filled one in on a Saturday morning at the Saint-Gilles counter, and the field that trips people up is not the declared value: it is the HS tariff code, which you have to look up on the SPF Finances website before you leave home. Allow five minutes and a charged phone.

Four countries where the post office is the only route

Neuhaus delivers to 25 countries, all European. Switzerland, Canada, Norway and Japan are not among them.

That reverses the previous table, and it does so at the worst possible point: the destinations the houses do not serve are precisely the ones that demand the most paperwork. To Switzerland, budget €37.20 of postage, a CN23 and a pro forma invoice in duplicate.

Leonidas describes deliveries across the whole of Europe, refuses post office boxes and military bases, and excludes Corsica, Sicily and Sardinia by name. Check before you fill your basket, never after.

How do you pack a ballotin that has to travel?

The ballotin's own cardboard protects the pralines from one another. It protects nothing against a sorting tray.

• Wedge the closed box inside a larger carton, with crumpled paper on all six faces. A ballotin that shifts two centimetres arrives with dented corners.
• Post on a Monday or a Tuesday. A parcel handed in on Friday spends the weekend in an unairconditioned sorting centre.
• Above 25 °C, give up the economy service. With no tracking, you will not even know where the parcel got hot.
• Pick the pralines that travel: palets, mendiants, marzipan, gianduja. Cream ganaches and manons are the first to give up.
• Describe the contents precisely on the CN23, with the HS code and the country of origin. An empty field means a return to sender.
• Add the €3.55 guarantee beyond a hundred euros of contents. It covers loss and damage up to €500.
• Warn the recipient of the arrival date. A parcel that waits three hours outside a door in the sun cancels everything else.

One last point on remedies, because it separates the two routes better than price does. The bpost guarantee covers loss and damage. A ballotin that melted and set again is neither lost nor broken, and you will get nothing. Leonidas, for its part, refunds 25 % of the delivery charge for one working day of delay, 50 % for two, 100 % beyond that, and carries duties and taxes itself on shipments outside the Union. The parcel you post yourself offers neither of those two safety nets.

To pick the house rather than the carrier, buying Belgian chocolate online compares the shops one by one. If you are travelling with the parcel instead of sending it, chocolate in hand luggage gives the airport rules, and storing Belgian chocolate explains what to do with it on arrival. Our ranking keeps the house order of preference.