A customer purchases Halloween candy at a Walmart supercenter on October 16, 2024 in Austin, Texas.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
The scariest thing haunting Halloween this year isn’t a ghost, goblin or ghoul, it’s the price of chocolate.
From Snickers to Reese’s to Twix, one of America’s favorite treats is getting more expensive as tariffs, inflation and high cocoa prices squeeze profit margins and customers’ wallets, which could lead to fewer chocolate bars landing in candy buckets this year.
Chocolate prices have jumped nearly 30% since last Halloween and nearly 78% over the past five years, according to data from research firm Circana and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. A 100-piece bag of assorted candy now costs $16.39, up from $7.20 in 2020, FinanceBuzz found.
This peak appears on store shelves. Variety packs of Hershey — maker of Reese’s, KitKats and Heath bars — are up about 22 percent, while Mars, the company behind M&M’s and Milky Way, has raised prices about 12 percent, according to the Century Foundation, a progressive, independent think tank, and Groundwork Collaborative.
“The season got off to a slow start,” Hershey CEO Kirk Tanner told investors on an earnings conference call Thursday, warning that holiday sales could be weaker this year.
About 4 in 5 Americans buy candy for the Halloween holiday, according to YouGov. This time of year accounts for about 18 percent of annual U.S. candy sales, second only to Christmas, according to the National Confectioners Association.
But chocolate’s dominance is waning. Circana found they accounted for 52% of Halloween candy sales last year, up from 44% this year, as shoppers turn to cheaper, trendier candy.
“Macroeconomic headwinds” are among the culprits, said Sally Wyatt, who works for Circana, analyzing consumer packaged goods globally and as an advisor to the restaurant industry. “It’s the cumulative impact that adds up to the fact that we’ve outpaced wage growth. So consumers have started to… [make] very precise choices on discretionary elements.
Industry-wide, candy prices are outpacing the national inflation rate, an increase of about 10 percent from last year, according to the Century Foundation. Still, the National Retail Federation said 2025 is expected to be a record year for U.S. candy sales, with an estimated $3.9 billion spent on Halloween candy alone.
“Even as consumers face higher prices for food, they continue to leave room in their budgets for chocolate and candy, which means this category is strong, vibrant and growing,” Carly Schildhaus, spokesperson for the National Confectioners Association, told CNBC.
Much of the chocolate filling U.S. shelves this fall was made from cocoa beans bought at record prices last December, when futures prices peaked above $12,000 a ton, experts said. Prices have since cooled to around $6,000, but that’s still more than double the pre-pandemic average.
A cocktail of rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, drought and crop diseases over the past three years has devastated crops in West Africa, which produces about 70% of the world’s cocoa. The result: the largest global cocoa deficit in 60 years, with supply half a million tonnes short of demand.
Prices could stabilize, but not decline, by next year as crop yields have increased, said David Branch, industry manager at the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute.
“It’s not just about the cost of making cocoa and other ingredients,” Branch told CNBC. “It’s also a combination of labor, transportation, fuel, overhead [and] all of these factors and, given the rate of inflation that we’ve been in, these have gone up and not really gone down. »
Hershey said Thursday that tariff spending will cost the company between $160 million and $170 million this year. In July, it also announced a “low double-digit” price increase, although executives said those increases were not related to tariffs or Halloween prices.
Chocolate makers have lobbied the Trump administration for tariff exemptions on cocoa and other agricultural imports, arguing they have little ability to source ingredients domestically.
Sweet variety
As chocolate becomes more expensive, fruity, tart, and chewy candies have become more popular. More than half of shoppers said they plan to prioritize gummy candy for Halloween this year, NielsenIQ found.
On average, the price per pound of chocolate rose nearly 14% in the 12 weeks ending Oct. 5, while sales volumes fell 6%, according to Circana data. Non-chocolate Halloween candies, such as Jolly Ranchers and Skittles, saw sales increase 8.3% during the same period.
Young adults, particularly Gen Z, are also fueling the growth of non-chocolate categories – gravitating toward gummies, freeze-dried candies, and TikTok-friendly flavor mashups.
“It’s this experience [aspect] because you can have it [non-chocolate items] with chewy, sweet, tangy, sweet and spicy flavors,” Wyatt told CNBC. “Some candies give you this big explosion of flavors in your mouth. We’ve seen it popular with different cohorts.
Chocolate makers react in the same way. Hershey expanded its candy line, including partnering with Shaquille O’Neal, and launched ghost-shaped Twizzlers and mismatched Jolly Rancher “Trickies” candies.
Mondelez Internationalmaker of Cadbury and Toblerone, said it was also prioritizing gummies in the US market. CEO Dirk Van de Put, however, said during an earnings conference call on Tuesday that the U.S. market in particular “is slower than we’ve seen in a while” and that the company’s promotional strategy earlier this year “did not give us the volume effect that we were hoping for.”
Manufacturers are also experimenting with smaller bars, new toppings and non-cocoa options such as cream or nut-based confections to offset rising ingredient costs, Branch said.
“Companies need to be very conscious of their ability to keep their prices the same. They can’t just keep raising their prices and expect sales to continue to increase,” Branch said. “But customers haven’t lost their appetite for chocolate. It’s going to remain a pleasure that people will always have and that they can’t really live without.”