Each year when fall is approaching, thousands of businesses are preparing for the pumpkin spice craze, from coffee shops to department stores. Learn how logistics professionals like us help ensure the pumpkin spice products we all know and love get onto the necessary shelves.
Pumpkin Spice Craze
Foliage, sweater weather, apple picking and pumpkin carving come around once a year with great anticipation. The same is true for a more recent addition to fall favorites; pumpkin spice. Pumpkin spice products were introduced in the early 2000s but they’ve taken off in recent years, necessitating significant and time-sensitive logistics work. To keep up with demand, businesses of all kinds have had to make incremental adjustments each year to ensure customers are getting the products they want come that first glimpse of fall.
How Logistics is Impacted by Seasonal Trends
The uptick in businesses’ demands for certain products in specific times of year is nothing new to the logistics industry. Adjustments are made due to the necessities of seasonality, most notably around the holidays, so dealing with the pumpkin spice craze is nothing new to logistics professionals. While it may seem like a simple biproduct of supply and demand, the agriculture, transportation, and manufacturing sectors need to be to running optimally in order to ensure a smooth and functional supply chain.
Pumpkin production has been astronomically increased since the craze began, a planning process that begins more than six months ahead of those few fall months we all look forward to. In 2020 alone, more than 2 billion pounds of pumpkins were grown in preparation for the demand of fall. Further complicating the supply chain, pumpkin season happens to coincide with transportation’s peak season, August-October, so getting the much-loved pumpkin spice products to their retailers in time is an added challenge.
Types of Pumpkin Spice Products
It’s easy to see how significantly the pumpkin spice season is reliant upon logistics when you realize just how many pumpkin spice products there are:
- Candles
- Baking products
- Coffee syrup/flavoring
- Coffee beans
- Popcorn
- Candies
- Coffee creamer
- Ice cream
- Tea
- Bread
- Cereal
- Clothing and accessories celebrating pumpkin spice season
Questions About Seasonal Logistics?
If you still have questions about how seasonality impacts logistics, feel free to contact us with any and all questions you may have!