Thread: Candy...candy...and more candy

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Where are some good places to get bulk candy cheap?

For the last few years, this is what I've been doing:

I have a freind that owns a vending machine company. He gets me the candy at his cost, but it is still quite expensive.

I usually get 35 pounds of candy corn, 30 pounds of hershey chocolate minis, 15 pounds of sour patch kids and 10 or 15 pounds of whatever else is the big thing that year. 90 to 95 pounds of candy each year. We get about 200 or so TOTers.

I also give out glow necklases to all of them.

So it's about $80.00 or $90.00 for the glow necklases and about $125.00 to $140.00 for the candy.

I am interested if anyone knows of cheaper alternatives for either, but here is the problem with the candy. As I do it now, I make up little zip lock baggies with Halloween designs on them and fill each one with a mix of the candy since a lot of it is loose and unwrapped. I also have to do this to keep the candy dry. To get the treats, TOTers have to reach into my witches cauldren which is filled with Dry Ice Fog. The moisture wrecks most candy wrappers, so I have to keep them in baggies.

The problem is some parents get concerned if the candy is loose like that and isn't individually wrapped from a store. I'm afraid that a lot of it may just get thown out when it gets home by cautious parents. Of course buying these things in small individually wrapped packages will boost the cost considerably!

Any ideas out there?

I have a very similar problem but on a larger scale. Last year we had about 2500 TOTers and spent over $500 on candy. This year we are thinking about going with the bazooka style bubble gum to save some cash......

Cheaper candy. Buckets of bazooka bubble gum or mary janes go a long way. If you have that many kids you might want to scale it down.

I dont think I am going to be down sizing but I dont want it to get any bigger. Every year we seem to pick up about 500 TOTers. Bazooka seems to be the answer.

I don't mean scaling your haunt down, I meant scaling down the candy.

I bag the little flavored tootsie roll minis. I pay like $6.00 for a 3lb bag I buy a few of them nothing fancy. I end up having candy left over. So many ppl come to my haunt to be scared if they get candy that is a bonus.

I buy the candy not bag the candy

I have to bag the candy even if it is individually wrapped, because of the moisture caused by the dry ice. We make the kids reach into the witche's cauldren to get the candy. It is filled with dry ice fog. The glow neclkases are in there too making the fog glow an eerie green the whole time.

So whatever I get, I will have to bag up.

Maybe some bazooka gum and tootsie roll minis would be a cheaper alternative. Any ideas where I can get good bulk pricing on those?

I used to get my candy (when I had lots of TOTs) at Sam's Club. Any of the warehouse stores (Costco, Sam's etc.) would have huge amounts for cheap, I would think.

http://www.funexpress.com/feweb/appl...namespace=main

http://www.orientaltrading.com/

They usually seem to have pretty decent prices, candy, and service.