The economy has come for Tami Adolphson's Halloween candy bowl. Prices are so high this year that she considered turning off the porch light at her home near Salt Lake City and ignoring the doorbell. Ms. Adolphson, 63, and her husband, Lee, 68, closed down their trucking company and retired last year. The household budget is tight. "We're finding it harder to justify big prices even for the extremely satisfying ritual of handing out candy to kids," she said. "We are not going to dip into savings for Halloween candy." But she couldn't stand missing out. "I just can't turn off the lights on these children," she said. So last week she went to Costco and spent $21.39 on a bag of 90 mixed chocolate bars. "We just won't eat out one time this month," she said. "It's worth it to keep the tradition."
Anyone who has been to the grocery store recently has noticed higher prices. The cost of vegetables has jumped by 6 percent since last year. Beef is up by about 9 percent. But the price of Halloween candy — particularly chocolate — is even scarier. One recent analysis of the prices on 17 popular Halloween candy varieties showed a 15 percent jump from last year. The average price of a 100-piece bag is $16.96, up a staggering 71 percent since 2021, according to Finance Buzz, a digital media company. Google searches for "cheap Halloween candy bulk" and "where to buy cheap Halloween candy" are up more than 5,000 percent year-over-year, said Megan Stoner, a spokeswoman for the company.
"The prices have gotten completely out of hand," said Renni Turpin, 30. This is her first Halloween in a new neighborhood in Charlotte, N.C., and she wants to make a good impression. "No one wants to be the 'raisin house,'" she said. She would like to be the king-size candy bar house, but she works at a school and recently purchased her home. Even buying slightly less expensive candy, she figures she'll spend about $100, or what she might spend on a week's worth of groceries. "It means that the Halloween tradition is now a financial burden," she said. We asked New York Times readers if the price of candy was changing how they would approach trick-or-treating this year. More than 200 people responded, and almost 90 percent of them said they were adjusting their approach because the price of candy was so high. They are buying less, shopping sales and heading to bargain grocery outlets. Candy bowls are being cut with small bags of salty snacks, temporary tattoos, Play-Doh and low-cost trinkets they can buy in bulk. And then there is the classic method for stretching a small candy budget: Limit how many pieces a child (or rowdy teenager) can take. Already, Halloween candy sales for the month ending Oct. 17 are down 6 percent compared with the same period last year, according to Nielsen IQ, a market research firm. Some people are abandoning the classic chocolate offerings. A climate-driven global cacao supply crisis sent prices to record highs in 2025, and companies began formulating their chocolate with less expensive ingredients and selling smaller packages of candy for more money. A bag of Reese's miniatures that weighed 17.6 ounces last year weighs 15.8 ounces now and costs $1.50 more, according to analysts at the web research company Apify. Luckily, Sour Patch Kids, Skittles and Nerd Gummy Clusters are less expensive and climbing in popularity among younger generations, who are turning away from chocolate in favor of candies with texture and sour or tangy flavors, said Sally Lyon Wyatt, an executive vice president for consumer goods and food service insights at Mintel, the market research firm. "People will celebrate Halloween, but they're going to use different tactics to do it," she said. "Candy might be part of it, but maybe not as much as it had been in the past. There's just going to be a bit more creati...
Source: New York Times Business · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing