Hi, I'm Dan Pramak and welcome to Axios Recap, presented by Bridge Bank.

Today's Wednesday, October 7th, the Dow is up, more NFL players are down with coronavirus,

and we're focused on the business of candy.

Halloween is just 24 days away, but for most of us, it's going to be unrecognizable.

Trick-or-treating has already been canceled in many places, because it involves interacting with

strangers and kids putting their hands in the same candy bowl as kids just put it in before.

Basically a COVID cocktail. Halloween parties? Well, at best, they're going to be a lot

smaller. In fact, the only thing really going for Halloween in the pandemic age is that masks are

entirely appropriate. For kids, this is just the latest in a long line of 2020 suck. For the

candy industry, though, it could have longer lasting ramifications.

Halloween for them is as big, if not bigger than Easter and Christmas, and candy makers

won't get another bite of that caramel apple until next October. Early sales numbers have

been promising, but the reality is that the vast majority of Halloween candy

doesn't come off the shelves until just days before the holiday itself. So we wanted to discuss

Halloween and the broader state of confection with the CEO of Illinois-based Ferrara Candy,

which makes everything from Brax Candycorns to Jujifi fruits to nerds. That conversation in 15 seconds.

We're joined now by Ferrara Candy CEO Todd Seawak. So Todd, let's start just with Halloween.

How important is that holiday to the candy industry overall and to your company in particular?

Halloween, as you can appreciate, is a significant holiday in celebration for our industry.

It represents about $4.5 billion of retail sales. If you think about it at the very end of

August, is back-to-school fades and the fall season begins to emerge. It's about a 13-week

holiday. And so it's important to us. For our business specifically, it's a 10% component of our

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