Advanced options
The signalling system works: pumpkin lit = open for business, lights off = walk on by: budget for the hours you'll actually answer (peak is 5-8pm). Individually wrapped only (parents bin loose sweets), a mix beats one type, and the self-serve bowl on the doorstep empties into the first big kid's bag: hand them out. Leftovers are not a planning failure: they're November's supply.
What The Halloween Sweets Calculator Works Out
- Sweets needed: expected trick-or-treaters x sweets per child, plus a 20% buffer. Footfall runs from a quiet street's ten callers to the decorated cul-de-sac's hundred-plus; family density and the street's Halloween reputation are the two predictors.
- Buy: the sweet count converted into supermarket tubs (about 60 wrapped sweets at around GBP 5) or 25-piece multipack bags, so a normal estate's evening costs about a tenner.
- Veteran rules: buy sweets you dislike so the leftovers survive, individually wrapped only, hand them out rather than leaving a bowl, and shop the half-price Halloween ranges on 1 November for next year.
- Last year's count (advanced): the only forecast worth much. Enter it and it replaces the street-type estimate.
- Safety buffer (advanced): the 20% default protects against the 7pm dash; drop it if you are happy to switch the pumpkin off early, raise it on a street with a reputation.
- Hours answering the door (advanced): sets the doorbells-per-hour figure. Peak is 5-8pm, so the busiest hour runs around double the average.
- Sweets per tub and tub price (advanced): override the 60-sweet, GBP 5 tub if you are buying fun-size multipacks, lollies or a wholesaler's box.
- Pumpkin, candles and decorations (advanced): the rest of the evening's budget. Even with a carved pumpkin and a string of lights the whole institution usually costs under GBP 20.
- Whole evening cost and per trick-or-treater (advanced): sweets plus decorations, and that total divided by callers, which typically lands at 30-60p a child for an evening of community goodwill.
- Expected leftovers (advanced): the sweets bought minus the sweets handed out if the forecast holds: not a planning failure, but November's lunchbox supply.