Reese’s Sets Up Vending Machine For Halloween Candy Trading

To allow consumers to trade in Halloween candy that they don’t like, Reese’s is turning to vending machines. The company has launched its own “Reese’s Halloween Candy Converter Machine,” CNN reported.

In a survey that Reese’s commissioned, it was found that 90 percent of Americans traded their unwanted Halloween candy – or that they wanted to do so. As Hershey’s Brand Publicity Lead Anna Lingeris told CNN, “as the #1 Halloween candy (with over half of candy buyers purchasing Reese’s), Reese’s has come up with a solution: Give us your unwanted candy, and we’ll give you what you actually want – Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.”

After making its debut in Tarrytown, New York at a Halloween parade, the machine was to be set up in New York City at 4:00 p.m. and run until 9:00 p.m. Lingeris said the brand was planning to distribute as many as 10,000 candies at the machine.

The news comes as Hershey’s no longer wants to be a “page-two” kind of player when it comes to consumers’ attentions or its approach to the market, which means the brand is looking to do more than lightly recalibrate. In a digital and multi-channel world, Hershey’s is ready to hit the reset button.

“We are literally changing the way Hershey’s does business,” Doug Straton, chief digital commerce officer of The Hershey Company, has said. “So, from process change at the R&D and innovation level all the way down through sales and marketing, we’re making finely-tuned tweaks … to basically make everything that we do digital.”

In 2018, that transformation has largely been about the company finding new ways to insert itself into a customer’s entire shopping experience, whether online or off. Consumers will spend up to six times as much if they can move seamlessly across all platforms, which means Hershey’s is focusing its development and investment efforts on seamless transactions. So far, products can be shipped to homes through Amazon or Peapod, picked up at Walmart or fulfilled through goPuff.