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Recreating Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Magic — A Lesson for Brands and Retailers — Retail Bum
Whether you like it or not, pumpkin spice season is here, with coffee giant Starbucks officially rolling out its pumpkin spice lattes (PSL) and celebrating its 20th birthday last week.
Starbucks’ reintroduction of the fall favorite on its menu came a week after Dunkin’ rolled out its version and nearly a month after 7-Eleven began selling PSLs in its stores.
While coffee chains have introduced the drink earlier than usual this year — following in the footsteps of retailers like Lowe’s and Home Depot that began selling Christmas décor before Halloween — there is plenty of reason to do so.
Believe it or not, selling pumpkin spice everything is big business for cafes, restaurants, and retailers in the U.S. According to Nielsen, sales of pumpkin-flavor products reached $802.5 million last year, up 42% compared to 2019, with consumers not only buying voracious amounts of PSLs but also several other pumpkin-flavored products such as candles, cereals, beers, Oreos and even Spam and trash bags. A quick search of Pumpkin spice products on Walmart’s website alone reportedly yields over a thousand results.
