Should a sweet shop give away sweets for free at Halloween?

[Balletcab]

I wanted to pose a question and see what your thoughts are on this.
If you were taking you child out trick or treating today, would you march into a small independent sweet/ice cream shop that you have never been into before and demand that the owner high fives your child and then gives your child free sweets? And then when the owner explains they are a small business and giving sweets away for free isn’t a very affordable thing for a small business to do, would you get angry and berate the owner for not giving sweets to your child for free?
I am the small business and margins are very tight. I can’t afford to give away sweets to every child who comes in dressed up at Halloween.
This happened today and the parent made me feel awful for not handing out free stuff. Would they approach Tesco and ask the same? Would they give away things from their work or business for free if I marched up to them dressed as a pumpkin?
What do you think?

Usually yes, I have heard of Halloween trails as mentioned with small businesses but it’s far from common in the UK and I’d expect it to be well advertised and participating stores clearly designated so it’s a bit odd to go into just any store and expect free sweets even if they sell confectionery.

They are really rude, I'm the same and ruminate on confrontations but please try and forget it. You did nothing wrong and they are entitled pricks.

Bit of a tangent but I actually had the opposite situation today- popped into a craft market with DD who is 3 and they had sweets scattered all over the usual tables. The sellers kept telling her to take them and I had to intervene. I don't want my 3 year old eating sweets!

Tbf she has a large social media following from that I gather. She also gives away presents to children at Christmas who might otherwise not get anything and active in uniform emergency services get free ice cream.

Again if I remember correctly all the funds her Facebook create she uses straight back into the community with things like the gifts and free ice creams. They end up with people lining the streets.

Our local chippy also give out sweets to children who come in on Halloween.

The parent was an entitled dick, and their child/children will grow up to become entitled dicks.

Years ago i worked in a small village in a local independent chemist. We used Facebook to advertise that kids could come in and get sweets between the hours of 5-6pm for Halloween. It was a nice thing for the owner to do to give back to her community. However, she wasn't giving away her stock , she bought a set amount of sweets in and it was limited to an hour therefore had minimal impact on her actual business.

In your case it would be actual stock that you would be giving away and if that isn't affordable, then fair enough. This mother was rude and entitled, if the area in which you live doesn't have many homes that participate, then you buy a box of celebrations and have them at home.

Of course not. Halloween is nothing better than beggy theft anyway, knocking on people's doors.. never mind businesses!

I'm guessing that, if a regular customer who came to buy sweets week in, week out, turned up at Hallowe'en, OP might be more amenable to giving them a couple of free ones, making it very clear to the child that it's 'just because you're a very good customer and it's Hallowe'en!" (could still backfire if they assume it extends to all of their friends and siblings too); but pound to a penny, the kind of parent who turns up doing this is also the kind of person who wouldn't dream of ever paying 'those rip-off prices' - like most people who don't appreciate the difference in economics between multi-billion national supermarket chains and tiny local family shops; nor indeed the huge difference in quality between what the little independent specialist shops sell and bags of Haribo.

I suppose you could always put up a sign saying "Psst! Parents! Ask us in advance about our pre-paid Trick or Treat Evening for your little ones!" Make it clear that the kids can be given sweets, with the parents' agreement, BUT of course, only the ones that the parent has already paid for. You know, just like kids don't pay to go to soft play and, to them, it's 'free'... because their parents have already paid for them.

That way, it gives you an easy 'out' to take the wind out of the sails of the CF parents and show them that they're basically asking for a standard, planned shop 'product', but weirdly expecting not to pay for it for some reason. Also, you may get non-CF parents who spot it and take you up on it, meaning extra trade as their little ones pour in and excitedly leave with a bag of sweets, without ever needing to know that it was already paid for two days previously or see the voucher that their parents discreetly pass to you.

I'd also make it clear that, when customers pay for purchases, it's for products that they have chosen themselves. If they're expecting you to hand over some random sweets, how can you know what the child might not like, be allergic to or contain ingredients that are contrary to their dietary requirements? This kind of non-thinking parent that demand free sweets will very likely be the same kind who would bitterly complain and leave horrendous reviews for your shop if you happened to unwittingly offer them something that their child couldn't eat.

I haven't said anything of the sort about the US. I've suggested that retail practices are perhaps somewhat ahead of those in the UK, but it seems there are in fact forward thinking businesses and localities clubbing together to advance retail interests.

If a sweet shop owner has tight margins, then Halloween is the ideal time to explore ways of improving those margins.

There's nothing to be lost from looking at retail practices from elsewhere and considering how they could benefit struggling independent businesses in the UK. The solution to small margins isn't always, for eg., charging people full whack for sweets at Halloween, or failing to figure out ways to generate good will in your core customer base.

It will all be over by tomorrow. I don't give sweets out as I don't think it is a good idea. As we don't decorate our house we don't get any callers anyway.

I've always noticed there's an s missing from your username 😄

Anyway, when the US gets rid of its guns and people stop shooting up schools you can come back and lecture us on community spirit.

I'm well aware this is a sweeping generalisation on the US population, but I live in a UK town with a pretty amazing sense of community so I decided to be a bit bitey in response to yours.

YABU for feeling bad about saying No to the CFs.

Please don’t feel bad. You are running a business and I’m sure things are hard enough at the moment for you. Some people have a cheek!

In the same way that people try and make out that a photographer/florist/musician doing stuff for free is good marketing etc.......... it isnt. Its doing stuff for free/pennies for cf's who think if they bat their eyelids nicely they can get free stuff. Artists, businesses etc really dont benefit all that much from doing free stuff.

God, can you imagine?

Complaints about which sweets are free, demanding they are given something else, taking to fb saying there weren't options for this that and the other, complaints if the shop ran out, complaints that the shop didnt give each child enough or didnt have anything for the parents, how they could have offered hot chocolate too...

Anyone who thinks its a good idea has been blessed with the good fortune to not have to deal with the general public!

Well I’ve just come from my local Tesco Express and a bunch of young teenage kids (in masks) were swearing at the shopkeeper for not handing out sweets. They were on bikes and I have never seen them before. Halloween must draw them out…

Was the mum British? Only asking as last two hallowe’ens I’ve been in Italy and now France and it seems the done thing for little kids to go from shop to shop and get sweets, in the daytime (and not just to sweet shops). In the uk we’d only expect to trick or treat to people’s homes, but on the continent they seem to expect to trick or treat the shopkeepers (in a cute way - tiny kids dressed up).

But YANBU

If she'd come in and spent quite a bit of money then it would be nice to give her child a sweet, but I don't think that should be expected. She's not a customer, though, is she? She just wants something for nothing.

There are far too many grabby people about wanting something for free these days. I would never expect a small business to give away things for free on halloween or any other day of the year.
If a business (big or small) chooses to do that, then presumably they've assessed the marketing value and doing it voluntarily. And will make it clear that's what they're doing.
A completely different situation to some CF who marches into your shop and demand free sweets.

I spend a small fortune in Asda, don’t see them giving my kids freebies,

Tesco would offer them one of their tiny free apples maybe!

It is not at all the same.

This is one brief retail season of the year when the focus of the core customer base of a sweet shop owner is sweets.

Better for their teeth😂

How was that post of mine that you quoted 'bitey' or how did it warrant the cheap shot wrt guns?

It's the lazy fallback of many on MN when anyone tries to suggest there are well-thought out elements to life, or running a small business in the US, or that living there is pleasant because neighbours are friendly and children in general tend to be polite.