Despite Halloween being months away, Hershey has already warned trick-or-treaters that it won’t be able to fulfill the demand for candy when the October holiday comes around.
The candy company, which makes popular chocolates such as Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Kit Kat, and Almond Joy, shared the sad news on Thursday during the company’s second-quarter earnings call, when CEO Michele Buck cited “capacity restraints,” according to CBS News.
“We will not be able to fully meet consumer demand due to capacity constraints,” Buck said of the Pennsylvania-based confectionery’s ability to produce enough candy for the 31 October holiday.
The issue stems from Hershey’s decision to prioritise “everyday on-shelf availability,” which have seen an increase in sales during the pandemic over special Halloween items, reports CNN. The candy maker apparently uses the same manufacturing lines for both its regular and seasonal products.
“We had a strategy of prioritising everyday on-shelf availability,” Buck said during the call, according to CNN, noting that it was “a tough decision” but a “choice that we needed to make”.
“Given many of our everyday and seasonal products are made on the same line, we have needed to balance production over the past several months to improve everyday on-shelf availability and build seasonal inventory at the same time,” Buck added.
The decision comes amid a record high demand for candy in the US, according to the National Confectioners Association, which reports that candy and chocolate sales in the US reached $36.9bn in 2021.
The candy maker CEO said the continued supply chain issues are impacting a number of industries and that Hershey is also beginning to see “bigger concerns relative to scarcity of ingredients needing to leverage different suppliers at higher cost and price points in order to secure production”.
While the candy company said it plans to add more manufacturing lines, in the hopes of meeting demand for seasonal products in the next few years, the news was still met with dismay on social media. Candy lovers from all over shared their concerns.
“Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse,” one person tweeted, while another said: “Everything is awful and I hate it.”
Others suggested that the answer to the shortage is to stock up on candy now, with someone else writing: “Hershey just announced there will be a candy shortage for Halloween. Get it early.”
In 2021, the National Retail Federation estimated that Americans would spend $10.4bn on Halloween that year, with $3bn spent on candy alone.
