Halloween is now more important than Valentine’s Day to Tesco, with sales of merchandise relating to the day trebling since 2005.
The spooky day – which falls on October 31 – has become one of the year’s main events for the supermarket, now equal in sales terms to Mother’s Day and Father’s Day combined.
Tesco expects to shift £55m-worth of Halloween products this year, including 1.4m pumpkins, 2m toffee apples and 1.5m fancy dress costumes.
Meanwhile, Halloween is growing 12% year-on-year at Asda, which says that confectionery and bakery lines – including ghoulish cupcakes – are amongst its most important products of the season.
The three-week run-up to Halloween was worth some £300m to grocers last year, according to Nielsen.
