From the Horses Mouth

I usually buy cheap Halloween candy about this time. The day after Halloween, leftover candy usually can be had at the local supermarkets and drug stores at half price. About a week later it goes down some more. I was at my local supermarket yesterday and noticed that there was very little cheap candy to be had.

I struck up a conversation with a young employee, grabbing a smoke outside the store entrance. Very interesting. He said nobody bought candy this year. Most of it never even got uncrated but just sat stacked in the store room, blocking passage. This week, they loaded it all on trucks and sent it back. So, no cheap candy. I asked what they would do with all that candy, because it was packaged in Halloween themed wrappings. He said not this year. Most of the candy was in regular wrapping. The candy companies knew it might not sell. They can cut production for a while and hopefully run inventories down during the holiday season. I said he must be glad to have gotten all that candy out of the back room. He said no, now it was filled with Thanksgiving stuff and it wasn't selling and this week the Christmas stuff was starting to come in. The kid said sales were down across the board this year and he didn't think the Christmas stuff was going to sell any better than the Halloween or Thanksgiving items.

This is at a store in a very affluent area of coastal SoCal. It's probably worse a lot of other places. One of the last things people cut back on is food.