Do you judge people who obsess over pumpkin spice?

Good deep dive article
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Pumpkin spice season, which officially began the last Tuesday of August when Starbucks released its fall drinks menu, is not the same as fall. It’s more about the idea of fall.

During pumpkin spice season, there are no cold rainy days, or uncomfortable family gatherings. Instead, all is crisp air, fuzzy sweaters, leaf piles, college football, bonfires, Taylor Swift albums and an overwhelming feeling of coziness. Scandinavians have hygge; Americans have pumpkin spice.

It’s such a lovely idea that other coffee shops and grocery stores, in a quest to beat Starbucks at its own game, have started rolling out their pumpkin spice products earlier and earlier in August.

The 7-Eleven pumpkin spice latte launched this year on 5 August, which, in the northern hemisphere, is still indisputably summer……

During the fiscal year that ended on 30 July 2022, Americans purchased more than $236m in pumpkin-spice-flavored grocery items, according to the market research firm Nielsen IQ, a 24% increase over the previous year. This accounting doesn’t include the myriad pumpkin spice household items like scented candles and dog shampoo or dishes and drinks in restaurants and coffee shops.

Amazon declined to share how many pumpkin spice products it sells, but a keyword search turned up more than 138,000 items.

These include not just cookies and pie filling (the two most popular applications of pumpkin spice), but also breakfast cereal, granola bars, hot chocolate, pet treats, baby food, beer, ramen, Goldfish crackers and Spam……

Pumpkin spice lovers aren’t just willing to buy more, they’re also willing to pay more. In a 2020 study of 40 grocery items across six retailers, MagnifyMoney, a personal finance site owned by Lending Tree, discovered an average 8.8% “tax” on pumpkin spice items. (Trader Joe’s was the worst perpetrator, with an average pumpkin spice markup of 17.6%.) But if sales are any indication, shoppers don’t care……

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2022/sep/26/pumpkin-spice-latte-sales-us?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other