For most of us, there was a time when Halloween wasn’t an expensive venture, even if you lived in a busy neighbourhood.
Thanks to inflation and “shrinkflation” though, keeping trick-or-treaters happy has gotten pricier.
“Two things are going on,” says Sylvain Charlebois, director of Dalhousie University‘s agrifood analytics lab.
“Prices are going up compared to last year, but also shrinkflation is really visible. Amazingly visible. You can buy packages of candy and there are probably half the number of items compared to last year.”
Charlebois describes shrinkflation as a strategy used by manufacturers where they reduce quantities but they don’t reduce price.
Scanning the shelves of some Greater Victoria grocery stores, the average price per unit for non-sale items was around 25 cents per snack-sized chocolate bar.
The best deal for Halloween-sized bars that we found was at Shoppers Drug Mart in Langford, where a 100 pack of Nestle bars sold for $17.99. A scan of Amazon Halloween candy produced a similar price, $19.99 for a 120 pack of Mars variety bars.
Charlebois says if trick-or-treaters want the same amounts of candy as years past, they’ll have to work a little harder.
“At the end of the night, trick-or-treaters will probably disappointed opening up some of the packages.”
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Jordan Cunningham
