The National Retail Federation just announced the results of its annual survey, which showed a number of interesting predictions for Valentine’s Day spending. Check this out:
- On average, each person will spend $103 on the holiday.
- Spending on friends, coworkers and pets (yes, I said pets) is up while spending on significant others is down.
- Men will spend about twice as much as women will, dropping $135.35 as opposed to women’s relatively miserly $72.28.
- Candy is the second most popular Valentine’s gift, with 47.2% of people expecting to buy it, bracketed by cards (54.9%) and flowers (35.6%).
Ladies, while you are out and about buying gifts for your coworkers, don’t forget that we guys like candy and pretty things too. Let’s try to balance the Valentine’s Day spend gender disparity once and for all. Tori, Susan, Susan and Laura, I hope you are reading this. I expect some nice goodies from you on that special day.
So how much are you planning to spend? And what do you plan to buy?
Chocolate heart by Bob.Fornal.
Let me start off by saying that I don’t like mushrooms. It’s a sore point in my marriage, but then again my husband doesn’t like pickles so we all have our flaws (perhaps we need the help of Reggie, the Marriage Saver). Nonetheless, I recently mentioned mushrooms in a series of radio interviews about the future of candy, and mushrooms may feature more prominently than you might imagine.
Susan S. told you that we had some media folks in the office a couple of weeks ago to talk about trends in chocolate and confectionery. We actually had two reasons to assemble this group of folks. The first was that we came back from the ALL CANDY EXPO with lots of information about what is happening in confectionery RIGHT NOW. The second reason is that we just completed a big survey to find out what’s going to happen with candy and chocolate in the next three to five years.
Before we had the media folks in, I participated in about 25 radio interviews around the country to talk about the future of candy. Here’s what I had to say:
Yup. You heard me. Chocolate and mushroom. I’ll probably pass on that one, but I love chocolate and cheese AND chocolate and bacon. My love for salt and chocolate is well documented on the blog here and here and even on the Author’s Page. I’m mildly obsessed.
But chocolate is only part of the story. Flavors are going to have a major impact on every level of the confectionery industry. The reporters who came to the luncheon sampled Chili Spiced Mango from Trader Joe’s and then sampled the new Chili Mango Jelly Belly. They tried dried, candied ginger and then sampled Naughty Ginger, a ginger and lemon lollipop from Das Foods. If you think these flavors seem to have an international influence, you’re right. That’s another major trend coming down the pike.
Experts overwhelmingly agreed that products with a focus on health would be the driving force in product innovation in the years ahead. That means we can look for more super fruits in our candy flavors, more calorie and portion control packaging, less sugar, lower calories and the addition of vitamins and minerals like Vitamin C and calcium.
What do you think the future of candy holds? Is bacon a trend, or a fad? What about salt? How about in the health arena? What would you like to see candy makers do more 0f?
I decided to do a very scientific study to determine what people’s favorite candies were but had neither the time nor other resources to put all that together, so I turned to my favorite research tool: Twitter Search. After all, if people are talking about it on Twitter, it’s got to be thorough and accurate, right?
Honestly, it was more curiosity than anything. What do people like? I searched for “is my favorite candy” and got these results. What surprised me most was that candy corn was on the first two listings returned. I love candy corn too but I thought more people did not have the appreciation for it that I did. What disappointed me is that nobody indicated that circus peanuts (the king of squishy banana-flavored candy) were their favorite. I guess there’s no accounting for taste.
What’s your favorite candy? Here’s what others said:
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dorish:
@sdornhelm Candy corn is my favorite candy. I’d love to have some right now
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that1girl08:
3 musketeers is my favorite candy bar. You wanted to know. *giggle*
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TheBeerWench:
@JonathanNail Peanut M&Ms are my favorite candy. Well anything that combines nuts and chocolate is my favorite candy. Hehe. CREAM CHEESE?
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theang:
The bakery had one lonely coffee crisp bar so I bought it. This is my favorite candy bar and it’s nearly impossible to find.
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