The real scare this Halloween might come when you gaze into your empty wallet after buying treats.
While candy prices have been in flux over recent years, consumers are always looking to get their hands on the cheapest options so they can still make the holidays fun.
Here’s what you need to know about the cost of candy as you prep for Halloween.
Chocolate trends
Prices for confectionery items increased 28.8 per cent between August 2021 and August 2025, according to Statistics Canada. Between August 2024 and 2025 the increase was 6.3 per cent. However, between July and August this year there was a decrease of 3.3 per cent.
Cocoa prices have more than doubled over the past two years due to poor weather and crop disease in West Africa, which supplies more than 70 per cent of the world’s cocoa, according to The Canadian Press.
Daniel Tsai, a professor at the Ted Rogers school of Management, has family who work in the grocery retail business. He wrote in an email that “generally speaking, food costs all around have gone up. Candy would be no different.”
“From my own experience, we’ve only seen prices go up,” wrote Tsai.
“In the month of August … we saw the rate of candy price inflation go up faster than the rate of average food price inflation because of the impacts of chocolate,” said Michael von Massow, a food economist at the University of Guelph.
Many factors impact the prices of chocolate — specifically on cocoa, the powder made from cacao beans to make chocolate — with the biggest being climate change.
“Cocoa is kind of the canary in the coal mine of climate change, and so very small differences in temperature can have dramatic impacts on yields,” said Massow.
“We’re seeing yields go down so there’s less cocoa around, which means prices of chocolate are going up. That’s been something that’s happened over the last number of years and is likely to continue to happen.”
Rebekah Howlett, an economist at Statistics Canada, said cocoa isn’t in such dire straits. Farmers have reported good growing conditions — experiencing light rain and periods of sunshine — which should lead to a healthy crop from the October to March batch.
According to data compiled by Trading Economics, a site that catalogues changes in stock and traded goods, cocoa has seen a decline in cost. It currently goes for just under $6,200 USD a tonne, well under the roughly $7,000 a tonne it went for in late August.
Savory alternatives
In response to what consumers can do to navigate potential changes, Massow said it might be worthwhile to find alternatives.
“If you’re going to spend a bunch of money on treats for kids on Halloween, perhaps think about giving out chips instead of candy,” said Massow. “We’ll see people change the kinds of things they give out if they are constrained by a budget.”
He also brought up the concept of lab grown chocolate, a process where cells are taken from cocoa plants to grow them over a shorter period of time — something not as susceptible to climate change.
According to Statistics Canada, there are 6,261,162 young Canadians in their trick-or-treating years in 2025, up 2,919 from 2024.
In October 2024, Canadians spent $1.87 billion in retail purchases of cookies, confectionery and snack foods. The category includes candy, chewing gum, chips, chocolate bars, marshmallows, mixed nuts, popcorn and pretzels.
Uncertain future
The volatility of the industry still presents in own risks. At Easter, there was a spike in cocoa prices, resulting in chocolate prices going up during that time.
In the tariff war between the U.S. Canada, candy got caught in the crossfire. Canada has since removed almost all of its retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods, including most candy and sugar products, effective Sept. 1.
Hershey’s said in their second quarter financial results that they expect “tariff expense, as understood today, to be approximately $170 to $180 million for the full year.”
