Trick-or-treaters, beware this Halloween, even candy is not excluded from inflation trends this spooky season. Cocoa production (CC=F) has dropped over 14% year-over-year while prices have risen nearly 120% in that time, putting pressure on everybody’s favorite candy bar makers.
Yahoo Finance senior reporter Brooke DiPalma details how candy companies are reacting to these cocoa headwinds to offset these cocoa headwinds.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Wealth here.
This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.
Well, speaking of holidays, sticky inflation could haunt trick or treaters this Halloween for the stickiest items that are coming into your household inflation for the category fell month over month.
But compared to last year, prices, they’re up here to discuss, we’ve got our very own Brooke Dipalma here, Brooke, what do we know?
Good morning Bible.
It seems like we’re sticking with the budget topic and consumers are certainly baking in a budget when it comes to higher costs.
This Halloween year over year sugar and sweets jumped nearly 1% at 0.8 and that was really said by sugar as well as sugar substitutes as well as candy and chewing gum.
We saw year over year, those were higher than last year.
So what exactly is causing that?
Well, it’s actually cocoa production and the impact of a climate pattern called El Nino that’s really causing cocoa futures to soar.
And as you can see right here, crop production is down more than 14% bringing the total global cocoa supply deficit to 462,000 metric tons.
Now, experts are telling me that CPG and candy makers are really working around it, they’re looking to, to do other things in order to offset this deficit in cocoa supply.
So you might expect more filling in your Snickers.
Perhaps people are changing up sizes.
And also, I mean, we’ve seen so many different candy makers really push out more gummies this holiday season.
And so you might be able to see more of those on the shelf as well to really offset this impact from higher cocoa costs.
Ok.
So how much do consumers plan to spend and can they save?
And if so where?
Yeah, good question on the savings.
I mean, certainly we’re seeing retailers come out with more and more promotions.
We know that this is gonna be a very promotional holiday yet again.
So believe it or not, consumers expect to spend more than last year, they’re really budgeting out to spend between 51 to $100 on candy alone.
And it really goes to show that consumers have this nostalgic feeling when it comes to Halloween, they wanna still be able to celebrate, but many consumers, seven out of 10 are actually waiting until closer to the holiday to really feel like they score the best deals.
But you don’t actually have to wait that long.
Experts telling me that with this promotional season coming along earlier and quicker than ever, Walmart target, we already know that they’ve had so many sales a year to date so far this season.
So you don’t necessarily have to wait until closer to the holiday to find those better deals.
Ok. All right.
I’m going to be tracking the aisles very closely.
We know you will be too.
Yeah, we find Zone Brooke.
Thanks so much.