National Retail Report - Sept. 19

Of Halloween candy and pumpkins...From the USDA's National Retail Report of Sept. 19:

Autumn-Themed Promotions Begin
There were occasional lingering end of summer promotions primarily in the Southwest region highlighting late summer crops, especially cantaloupes. Most ads this week, however, conveyed some type of autumn theme and began highlighting a variety of seasonal produce and flowers as well as candy and general merchandise for Halloween. In addition, there were quite a few football and tailgating themes and scattered ads promoting kosher items for the upcoming Rosh Hashanah holiday. Special savings promotions were abundant across the country and mostly consisted of “10 for $10” and “buy-one-get-one-free”. Overall this week, fresh produce ads were down slightly. This decline corresponded to a decrease of about 11% on vegetable ad activity and an increase of roughly 15% on fruits. The top 5 featured items were once again all fruits and included: grapes, cantaloupes, peaches, nectarines, and strawberries. These items accounted for 58% of all fruits and over 32% of total produce ads. Unlike the fruit ads which were highly concentrated on few items, vegetable ads were distributed widely across all items reported. Despite the decline in the number of vegetable ads, russet potatoes in 5 pound bags nearly quadrupled.