Editor's Plate: Creative Marketing Efforts Help Halloween Triumph Over COVID

This year’s Halloween, like every 2020 holiday, will be different; but one that shows how creative and resilient is the food and beverage industry—and especially its candy category. We’ve seen this ingenuity throughout the pandemic and from different categories within the food industry, but what I saw in the weeks leading up to October was special.

Halloween already had morphed from a single night of door-to-door trick-or-treating on October 31 into a billion-dollar industry with weeks of celebrations, parties and parades enjoyed by people of all ages. And for people like me, an excuse to buy bags of miniature chocolate bars. But that kind of growth only makes it a bigger potential loss. Canceling Halloween altogether would be another economic disruption in a year that has had more than enough of those from Covid-19.

How big a disruption? Halloween “season” accounts for approximately $4.6 billion in sales each year during the eight weeks leading up to Oct. 31, according to the National Confectioners Association.

Different locales across the country are considering or suggesting different rules. As of October 1, few seem to be pushing for outright bans on trick or treating, but everywhere there are dire warnings about social distancing, crowded parties and the contact tracing nightmare of having a hundred kids show up at your door … and then having those kids visit 50 more houses. Everyone—both the trick-or-treaters themselves and the homeowners handing out the candy—need to take precautions to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

This article was published on Food Processing magazine's website. Click here to read the entire article.