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10 30 24 Alicorn Investment Founder Bill Dendy on Halloween candy shrinkflation
But there's only one feeling like knowing your banker personally, like growing up with a bank you can count on, like being sure what you've earned is safe, secure, and local. There's only one feeling like knowing you're supporting your community. You deserve more from a bank. You deserve an institution that stood strong for generations. Bank of Colorado, there's only one. Member FDIC. At Sprouts Farmers Market, we're all about fresh, healthy, and delicious. Step into our bulk department to discover a world of options with hundreds of scoopable bulk bins and grab-and-go favorites. From wholesome grains and spices to limited-time goodies like pumpkin apple cashews and butter toffee peanuts, plus buying in bulk means you can get as much or as little as you like for your next recipe or snack attack. Visit your neighborhood Sprouts Farmers Market today, or fly for fills every scoop. At the end of the day, you can go to the Home Depot, and find out how you can do it. You can do it at the end of the day. You can go to the Home Depot and find out how you can do it. You can go to the Home Depot and find out how you can do it. With a story like flocked, you can go to the Home Depot and find out how you can do it. You can go to the Home Depot and find out how you can do it, and find out how you can do it. Now on Colorado's Morning News, tomorrow is Halloween, and while we're excited to hand out candy, we also hope to enjoy some as well, but will those Halloween candies be smaller than in years past? Joining us now on the KOA Common Spirit Health Hotline, a CPA and financial strategist Bill Dendy, who has done some frightening, if you will, research on chocolate this Halloween season. Bill, thanks for coming on Colorado's Morning News. I know we talk about shrinkflation, but it's shrinkflation getting into the candy business, the Halloween side of things this year. It is in a big way. I mean, we've seen good reasons for it to happen. The price of cokeo, the cokeo ingredient, has doubled in just one year. Since 2024, so it's beginning to year to now, the price of cokeo has doubled, so the main ingredient for chocolate's gotten so expensive, the manufacturers are looking for ways not to double the prices, but to be able to keep us buying the chocolate bars, and even some of the big chocolate manufacturers are coming up with other things such as more of the gummy type of candy so that they can still have their sales numbers, even if people aren't buying chocolate. Bill, before we dive a little bit into those alternatives to the favorites that are usually the chocolate go-tos for Halloween, what is contributing to the high price of cokeo that we're seeing right now? The big thing is, the Ivory Coast had a massive flood that wiped out a lot of the crops, and then those that survived ended up having a root rot that messed up the harvest, so it's just a major decrease in supply out there, with demand being somewhat consistent. On top of that, we've had inflation across the board. I mean, we've seen that in everything, almost anything you can think of is up 20%, 25% from where it was three or four years ago, but cokeo was already up 20%, 25% and then bam, we had a crop failure, and so we've seen that price about double. They hope that they're going to be able to recover, but there has been very little reinvestment in this, so it may take a while for the plantations and the growers to be able to recover from this challenge, so it may be with us for a while, but it's usually that first initial shock when you see prices jump up, it catches you, and what we've seen is a lot of the manufacturers trying to make up for that, and I have some people swearing that the flavors aren't even the same. Well, I'm not so sure about that, but I do know that the sizes are not even the same. And let's go there, Bill, because two things leap to mind for me, is there a contingency plan? Is there some other part of the region, maybe here domestically, that we can grow the cokeo plant or get the chocolate, and secondly, is there a chocolate substitute? Obviously that's why the taste is different if people are alleging that that's being put in because they can't get the real ingredients. And those are exactly the things major manufacturers are looking at, and for the independents, they've got some other options, and South America's got some great options for us. It's just so many of the contracts, and so much of the world supply was coming from the same area that it's created this imbalance, but like most things, give economics long enough, and it will work its way out, and suddenly the prices are high enough to incentivize other people to participate or for us to find new routes and new substitutes for chocolate. But the thing that's present right now is, Halloween's here, and the kids are like wanting their chocolate, and you can give out the candy corns, but you will not be the most popular person on the block if you're giving out the old candy corns. So it seems we want to give out our prizes, and the full bar-sized chocolate, that used to be the, I don't know, the big neighborhoods, if we went to the big houses, they gave out chocolate, the real-sized bars, not the little fun sizes. But we're seeing some people, especially those who are already living paycheck to paycheck, the only crunch of inflation, saying that Halloween this year has just gotten too expensive, and they're looking for ways to cut back, from costumes to what the candies are passing out to, even what events they're throwing or what they're putting in their front yard. Yeah, Bill, adjusting purchasing habits is definitely going to be a big thing we're going to see tomorrow during trick-or-treat time. What are some of the things that trick-or-tutors may find in their bags this year that may be an alternative to their go-to chocolates? Because I remember as a kid, chips were a big one because people felt like it was big, and it filled your bag, however, then just got crushed by all the other candy that you were collecting that night. And I like it. I even like the pretzels they put in the bags, and so many of the manufacturers there, you've got Halloween-style pretzels and gummies and cookies, and I'm talking about the kid-friendly gummies, but even Hershey's making the special gummy type rope. It's kind of like the old Twizzler, so different flavors besides the Twizzler Strawberry flavors. The nerds, oh, the nerds have different flavors in boxes, but these are the types of alternatives that people are finding in their bags, popcorn, the fun sides of the popcorn have become popser again, and some of the things that may at one time have been impractical or a little bit too expensive, or the price of other things overtaking them, suddenly it's not too expensive to do some of those things. I like all those options. I always wonder when my great aunt used to like to put raisins in there, little boxes of raisins. I didn't think that was a great, great gift. Talk about deflationary. Holy God. Bill, and wrapping up with you, I do want to ask, since we couch everything in this talk about this being somebody's Super Bowl space, whatever it is, is Halloween the Super Bowl for candy manufacturers in many ways, and how do you see them recovering if they're not getting the sales and doing the things that they normally do during this holiday? Well, the candy manufacturers depend on several lucky holidays. Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, the Christmas holidays as well, but Halloween is a big payday form, and we're seeing even expectations of earnings. Now for a lot of the big manufacturers, they're not just making chocolate candy. They do a lot of other things too, and so this is an area they do expect to take a bit of a hit, and they're doing everything they can to avoid the hit, and it's not that they're doing anything wrong. It's just their input ingredients got higher, and when they try to pass it on to the consumer, the consumer is finding substitutes. They are finding a way to keep selling to the consumer by shrink plating, by giving us a bar, but the bar is no longer this many ounces, it's three quarters of that. It looks about the same packaging because they're making a little longer, but they're making a little thinner, so when you get down to how much chocolate you have, you didn't get as much, and there are some people who are applauding that, saying we always were serving too big of serving sizes, and that's maybe the right serving size, and we may be out into something really good because we're keeping the price at an affordable level if they can, unbelievably, people are saying in this case, shrink plating may be a blessing to both the consumer and the manufacturer by keeping the costs in the realm that we are comfortable spending, but also doing us some favors. However, I want my full big candy bar. I was going to say now, parents will have to take like eight of the little candy bars over the two that they usually steal from the kids, CPA and financial strategists, it's built on day. Thanks, Bill. But there's only one feeling like knowing your banker personally, like growing up with a bank you can count on, like being sure what you've earned is safe, secure, and local. There's only one feeling like knowing you're supporting your community. You deserve more from a bank. You deserve an institution that stood strong for generations. Bank of Colorado, there's only one. Remember FDIC. At Sprouts Farmers Market, we're all about fresh, healthy, and delicious. Step into our bulk department to discover a world of options with hundreds of scoopable bulk bins and grab-and-go favorites. From wholesome grains and spices to limited time goodies like pumpkin apple cashews and butter-toffee peanuts. Plus buying in bulk means you can get as much or as little as you like for your next recipe or snack attack. Visit your neighborhood Sprouts Farmers Market today, or fly for fills every scoop. (dramatic music)