NEW YORK - Skye Greenfield Cohen is used to people crowding inside her store in the weeks before Halloween to buy bags filled with chocolates and sugary treats. But this year, the crowds are staying away, leaving Economy Candy struggling during what is supposed to be the sweetest time of the year.
“There is definitely a lot of hesitation still around celebrating Halloween in the traditional fashion, and I think people are nervous to commit to buying those big bags of candy that they normally would,” said co-owner Skye.
Before this year, the iconic Lower East Side store would see up to 1,000 people walk through the doors during a typical pre-Halloween weekend. But now Skye and her husband, Mitchell Cohen, the store's third-generation owners, say they’re lucky if they get more than 50 sales on any given Saturday or Saturday, which is still better than it was just a few months ago, when the store saw just 15 customers on an average day.
“It’s still a fraction of what we’re doing,” said Skye. “But we’re just trying to make it through another 80-plus years.”
Economy Candy began not as a sweets shop but as a shoe and hat repair store in the 1930s. It started selling candy when it set up a push cart on the sidewalk. When the Great Depression hit, candy sales took off, leaving the main business behind. The push cart allowed Mitchell’s grandfather, Morris Cohen, to continue to pay the bills when people stopped spending money on repairs. In 1937, the repair shop officially became a candy store.
Now, during another economic hardship, with overall sales down 80%, Mitchell has gone back to the past. He's set up a push cart similar to the one his grandfather used through the 1950s, hoping it can help the shop make it through the coronavirus pandemic. The move has allowed them to serve customers in person as their physical store remains off limits due to concerns by Mitchell and Skye that the small space would be difficult for people to socially distance.
“We took it old school and started putting our shopping cart in front of the store on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays,” said Mitchell. “When we first started it was pretty slow because we’re just coming out of this. People were just happy to come by and talk with us about what’s going on.”
They say the candy cart, along with curbside pickup and online sales, is helping to keep the lights on. But without a busy Halloween rush, a season the store looks forward to every year, things won’t be the same.
“October is our busiest month of the year; Halloween is our biggest day of the year, and so we rely on sales during Halloween a lot, and obviously this year is going to be very different,” said Mitchell. “Usually people come into the store, which we’re not allowing right now, and just grab candy off the wall.”
The couple says it’s not just candy for trick-or-treaters that isn’t being purchased at the same quantity; it’s also the cancellation of most Halloween parties and events where sweets are usually devoured in massive quantities. Large gatherings in the state are still not allowed, and Mayor Bill de Blasio suggests New Yorkers avoid indoor celebrations and trick-or-treating inside apartment buildings.
“We usually supply a lot of the candy for the block parties that are happening in the city, and that’s obviously not happening this year. We usually supply candy for hotels and things like that and that’s not happening this year,” said Skye.
They say confusion over guidelines and restrictions has also left many customers so unsure about how they’ll celebrate the holiday that they’ve been afraid to buy the same amount of candy they usually would.
“We’ve had some families stop by, where someone in the family will say something along the lines like ‘while we’re here we should get trick or treat candy,’ and then someone else says, ‘oh well, I don't know, we haven’t decided what we’re doing yet, we don’t know what our building is doing, we don’t know if it’s safe,'” said the owners.
Across the country, though, it looks to be a different story. Research from the National Retail Federation shows that the average overall spending on home decorations, candy and greeting cards has gone up slightly.
But New York City may be different. The owners say the steep drop in tourism has hurt sales too; 25% of their revenue, they say, usually comes from people visiting the city. Until the pandemic is over, they’re not only hoping, but depending on New Yorkers to shop local.
“Family businesses whether it be around for one generation or three generations -- New York, Idaho, Alabama, California -- these are the stores that make each area unique, and make each part of America unique,” said Skye. “Without these stores we are just one giant Walmart, Target, Amazon superstore. As great as those stores could be, I don’t think that’s the goal of anybody to just have everything be the same. Stores like Economy Candy in Manhattan on the Lower East Side are part of what makes coming to New York so cool and exciting, so fun and different from where somebody else is from. And where that somebody else is from they have a store that you can’t find anywhere else, also.”
Skye and Mitchell have tried to entice people to indulge their sweet tooth by creating Halloween candy care packs, bags of two to five pounds worth of old fashioned candy and retro sweets, like Mary Janes, Halloween-themed pez dispensers and candy necklaces.
“Our friends kept telling us that people still want candy, they still want sweets, so that’s when we made our candy care packs,” said Skye.
The owners say they see a “rainbow at the end of the tunnel.” But until it appears they plan on staying creative and remembering the tough times the business has faced before, including World War II and the aftermath of the attacks on September 11.
“I think that this is a unique challenge, but I have faith that we’ll make it to the other end and that there’s a rainbow waiting for us, at the other end,” said Skye.
Although the fight to stay afloat doesn't have an end date in sight, the candy cart has become a symbol of hope during this Halloween season for both Skye and Mitchell.
“It’s nice. I mean, we’ve always had this picture of my grandfather on the corner helping a customer, in the front window, and it's right next to me as I work,” Mitchell said as he held back tears.