Valentine’s Day is still two weeks away, but your local drugstore has probably been celebrating for a month. Most chain stores around the country start stocking Valentine’s Day candy right after Christmas, leaving the candied hearts and marshmallows languishing on shelves long before the rest of us think to buy them. So why do they do it? Is anyone buying Valentine’s Day candy in January?
“The big chocolate hearts, no. Those don’t sell until right before the holiday,” says Paul Minger, Walgreen‘s category manager for confections. In fact, 70 percent of chocolate hearts sold at Walgreen are purchased within the last 48 hours leading up to Valentine’s Day. But Walgreen isn’t focused on chocolate hearts in January. It’s focused on everything else.
