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For Hershey, the holiday countdown starts more than a year in advance.
The Reese’s maker estimates that its holiday season operations, including Christmas and Easter, generate about a third of its North American confectionery sales, which totaled $9.1 billion last year. To prepare, Hershey has to make sure he’s prepared in advance. For example, next year’s Halloween is mostly already planned.
The holidays provide snack giants with an opportunity to increase sales, increase consumer awareness and remain competitive by launching new flavors, shapes, packaging and marketing promotions.
Just this year, a Pennsylvania company debuted. Vampire-shaped Kit Kats Most recently released for Halloween, Snickerdoodle Hershey’s Kisses and Kit Kats are coated in peppermint-flavored cream and crunchy red candy pieces for the holiday season. Last week, the 35-year-old “Holiday Bells” Kisses commercial was brought to life as part of an interactive experience surrounding the lighting of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center in New York City.
Food Dive spoke with Tiffany Menyhart, Hershey’s Chief Customer Officer, about the importance of the holidays to the company’s business and how she sees the future of seasonal snacks.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Food Dive: This time of year is a busy time for Hershey. Please tell us more about how important holidays are to your company.
Tiffany Menihart: Seasons are definitely a big part of our business. This is very important to us in our candy, mint and gum business, as well as our growing salty snacks business.
We’ve always been the season leader in Hershey. We are also a trusted advisor to many of our retail partners in planning their entire holiday season. So whether it’s the traditional seasons like Valentine’s, Easter and Halloween that are a big part of our business. As we look to existing and core brands alongside innovation, we hope to be a part of those special moments that matter to consumers.
The Halloween season has just ended, and preparations for next year have already begun. So if you think about it, we’ve already built the lessons learned from 2025 into a very strong plan for ’26. …Overall, I would say that the core brands and new product innovations we launched in 2025 performed very well.
2026 will see even more interactions across our confectionery portfolio. We’re very excited about that. We’re also working to improve what we call our visual identity system. This is how your products will appear both on your website and in your store. So if you think about a very large bag of candy, you want to make sure the consumer knows what they are buying in that bag and how many pieces.
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Provided by Hershey
Can you tell us more about Hershey’s strategy when it comes to vacation planning?
The season has very long lead times, not only for Hershey but also for our retail partners. To name a few examples, many retailers have closed out the Halloween season. We help advise on what worked and what didn’t work across categories in a particular season.
Where we’re really trying to optimize is around insights and consumer behavior and consumer patterns. This is where we look at digital activations to ensure we have key price points and that our promotional strategies are right for the consumer. Obviously we have a plan for sales, the sales part, but a lot of it is predetermined and we can take the lessons learned at the start of a particular season and apply them to next year’s sales cycle.
Taking Halloween as an example, how much of the 2026 season is already planned?
It would be a majority, maybe 80% to 90% would be considered. That’s because retailers start selling them right away starting next season. So we have to be ready for retail partners. We need to have that insight. And let me give you an example. We spend a lot of time thinking about new flavors, and if consumers are already buying Hershey Kiss for the holidays, what would delight them and really add to that moment, what new flavor profiles would they want?
All of this is backed by consumer testing that takes place well before the season goes on sale. So, we’re going to talk about some of the new and exciting holiday flavors that are currently on the market. All consumer testing will have been completed well before it goes on sale for the 2025 holiday season.
How have you seen holiday snacks and candy evolve?
We see so many snacks at home. About 32% or 33% of the use cases are snacking at home or what we call candy cooking. Hershey’s done a great job in that space, right? Our top two holiday brands this season are Hershey’s Kisses and Reese’s, which means a lot to us.
We also see more in terms of gifts and treats. Gifting accounts for 33% of seasonal sales and has grown at a CAGR of 7% over the past three years. Our data shows that among people who celebrated the holidays and purchased candy over the past two years (2023-2024), the incidence of candy gifts (primarily chocolate) increased from 39-40% in 2019-2020 to approximately 42-44%.
If you’re thinking of stocking stuffer gifts like all those candy canes filled with Kisses or Reese’s mini peanut butter cups, those are definitely on the rise. … It’s really important for Hershey to continue to look at what the consumer needs are within the season and adjust the portfolio to meet those consumer needs.
How do you ensure that seasonal innovations don’t cannibalize sales of existing products?
Hershey Kisses have always been a very popular brand item during the season. It is also widely used in baking. Baking is something that is really popular during the holidays compared to other seasons. Yes. We have Hershey Kisses, the traditional Hershey Kisses, that we buy in stores every day. But we also take a look at a new flavor of Kisses, a new foil for Kisses. One of our new flavors is Snickerdoodle Kiss. Comes in special foil packaging. Although it is a different color from other colors, it received an unusually high score in terms of consumer appeal.
When we put it in front of consumers, we saw that 66% of consumers said it would be additive. They will be purchased incrementally in addition to other Kisses you purchase during the season. Walk into select retailers today or visit select of our retailer sites and you will surely see that we are co-selling the iconic, traditional Hershey Kiss used in baking during the holidays. And we’ll also be introducing new flavor profiles like snickerdoodles and sugar cookies that we launched last holiday season.
Beyond innovation, what else is Hershey doing to help you stand out during the holidays?
We have a highly skilled and robust merchandising team that goes into retail stores every day to install eye-catching displays and showcase the Hershey brand and Hershey products to consumers. Hershey has also been a part of the Christmas spirit and holiday spirit for over 35 years with its Kisses “Holiday Bells” commercial. But this year, we’re actually bringing (the holiday kiss) to life by partnering with NBC Universal with the Rockefeller Center Tree Lighting Ceremony. It creates different values at different moments. And that sets it apart.
