Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | S | Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery

Season's eatings: it's time for the kids to shop for costumes, mom to order that turkey and dad to untangle those lights. Meanwhile, retailers are scrambling to deck their halls, er, shelves, cases and in-store bakeries with candy, cookies, cakes and pies for the forthcoming holiday season.

Article Excerpt
For every sweet, there is a season. For candy bars and popcorn balls, it's Halloween. For apple crisps and pumpkin pies, it's Thanksgiving. And for sugar cookies and candy canes, it's Christmas. The holidays are big business for supermarkets and in-store bakeries, where most consumers shop for baked goods, particularly in late fall and early winter, making the fourth quarter of the calendar year an extra happy one for retailers, manufacturers and bakers of all things sugary and sweet.

Spooky Sweets and Sizes

It seems that just as kids come down from their Easter candy fix, it's time for Halloween, the fun, cavity-causing holiday that's marked by more treats than tricks. Snack packs, miniatures and "funsize" portions are particularly popular on this traditionally sugar-laden holiday.

For example, Nabisco offers Halloween Mini Oreo, Teddy Grahams and Ritz Bitz Peanut Butter Sandwiches in Fun Size packs starting in mid/late September through Halloween. Nabisco also makes an 18-oz. overwrapped tray package of Halloween Oreos with five different cookie embossments and orange creme filling.

Please Pass the Pie

Thanksgiving and Christmas are "pie season," says Maria Cushing, director of category marketing--desserts for Schwan's Bakery, Inc., Suwanee, Ga.

Indeed, nothing says Thanksgiving like a pumpkin pie. Nearly every pie producer makes one. In fact, at the 2006 American Pie Championships,...