Confectionery and Nut Retailers (U.S.) — NAICS 445292

A Histometrics industry primer for public- and private-market investors.

1. Overview

This is the specialty-store corner of America's candy business: the chocolate boutiques, old-fashioned candy shops, fudge counters, bulk-candy bins, and nut-and-dried-fruit sellers you find in malls, tourist districts, airports, and Main Streets. Formally, North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code 445292 — Confectionery and Nut Retailers — covers stores that primarily retail purchased candy, other confections, nuts, and popcorn not made on the premises and not for immediate consumption [1].

Why it matters: this is a small, fragmented, largely privately held retail channel — not a place with many liquid stocks — but it sits on top of a very large consumer category. U.S. confectionery sales across all channels topped $54 billion in 2024, and roughly 98% of shoppers bought confectionery at some point that year [2]. Specialty stores are a thin slice of that (most candy is bought at supermarkets, convenience stores, and mass merchants), yet they capture the highest-margin, gift-and-experience end of it. The economics can be attractive per store and the best brands are durable, even though the number of publicly traded pure plays is tiny.

There are two very different ways in. Public investors get mostly indirect exposure — through branded chocolate manufacturers, one micro-cap specialty franchisor, or diversified holding companies whose candy operations are a rounding error on the parent. Private investors are where the industry actually lives: buying or financing an independent store, franchising a specialty concept, acquiring a regional chain or nut retailer, or backing a consolidation platform. The attractive businesses in either lane share the same traits — differentiated product, strong locations or digital customer relationships, disciplined inventory, and pricing power — in a category that is seasonal, discretionary, and sensitive to ingredient costs and rent.

2. What it is and how it's structured

Scope. NAICS 445292 (renamed from "Confectionery and Nut Stores" in the 2022 revision) captures establishments primarily retailing purchased candy, chocolate, nuts, and popcorn — a chocolate boutique, a bulk-candy store, a roasted-nut shop, a gift-oriented or destination candy store, and many omnichannel operators that run stores plus a website [1]. The store buys finished or semi-finished product and sells it at retail; it does not primarily manufacture.

What it excludes (and where those activities are counted instead) [1]:

• Making the candy. Chocolate and candy manufacturing sits in 311340 (nonchocolate confectionery), 311351/311352 (chocolate from cacao beans / from purchased chocolate), and roasted nuts and peanut butter in 311911. A brand like Hershey or Lindt is fundamentally a manufacturer, not a 445292 retailer.
• Candy made and eaten on premises. A fudge, popcorn, or ice-cream counter serving for immediate consumption leans toward food services (e.g., 722515, snack and nonalcoholic-beverage bars).
• Candy as one line among many. Supermarkets and grocery retailers (445110), convenience retailers (445131), warehouse clubs, drugstores, and mass merchants sell most of the nation's candy but are classified by their main business, not here.
• Adjacent specialty food. Baked-goods retailers (445291) and all-other specialty-food retailers (445298) are siblings under the same "Specialty Food Retailers" group.
• Much online and mail-order selling. Confectionery and nuts sold primarily via internet, mail order, or direct sale have historically been recorded outside this store-based code — one reason the code understates total candy-and-nut retailing (see Section 3).

Ownership mix. This is a small-business and franchise industry, layered roughly as: (1) independent, family-owned, single-location stores; (2) regional multi-unit retailers; (3) franchise systems where local franchisees own and operate stores; (4) private-equity-backed specialty chains; and (5) branded manufacturers that own stores, factory outlets, or visitor destinations. The 2022 Economic Census counted 2,097 firms in the code [3]. A handful of recognizable "chains" exist (See's, IT'SUGAR, Rocky Mountain, Fannie May, Kilwins, Lindt/Ghirardelli boutiques), but the long tail is independent owner-operators and franchisees. The strongest brands are owned by global confectionery groups that run stores mainly as marketing and experience vehicles. Federal data provide no clean public-versus-private ownership split.

3. How big it is

Federal statistics for the specialty-store channel (our ground-truth figures):

A few things these numbers tell you. Average store revenue is modest — roughly $0.8–1.3 million depending on whether you divide 2022 receipts by 2023 establishments (~$0.8M) or by 2022 firms (~$1.3M) [3][4]. Stores are small: about 6–7 employees each on average, and payroll works out to roughly $23,000 per worker per year — a signature of heavy part-time and seasonal staffing, not low full-time pay [4]. Concentration is low-to-moderate: the four largest firms took about 26% of industry receipts, the top eight 33.9%, the top twenty 44.1%, and the top fifty 52.4% in 2022 [3]. The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI, a standard concentration measure) is suppressed in the federal data, so we do not report a value [3]. The SBA size standard ($19.5M) is a government eligibility threshold — not a typical-company revenue estimate.

The undercount caveat — read this before quoting the size. Three adjustments matter:

1. This code is a sliver of the candy economy. Its ~$2.76 billion in specialty-store receipts is only about 5% of the ~$54 billion Americans spent on confectionery in 2024, because the vast majority of candy moves through supermarkets, convenience stores, mass merchants, and (increasingly) online — none of which are counted here [2][3]. If you want "the candy industry," this is not it; this is the specialty-retail channel of it.
2. County Business Patterns covers only employers. CBP excludes the self-employed, businesses without paid employees, and businesses without an employer identification number [5]. Many candy and nut sellers are tiny non-employer sole proprietors, seasonal pop-ups, farmers-market and cottage-food makers, and online-only shops. Census Nonemployer Statistics track those separately, but that figure is not in our data [6]; the true number of "someone selling candy for a living" is well above 2,097.
3. We lack several operating metrics. The federal figures include no industry-wide net income, store-level or same-store sales, gross margins, or e-commerce share for this code — where absent, we say so rather than invent a number.

4. The investable universe

Public companies rarely report NAICS 445292 as a standalone segment, so the table below is an exposure map, not a clean peer group. It separates public exposure from the larger private/other owners.

Public companies

Takeaway: no listed stock is a clean proxy for the candy-store channel. RMCF is the only pure play and is a speculative micro-cap; the big names (Hershey, Lindt, Mondelēz, Tootsie) are manufacturers whose stores don't move the needle; the rest carry the retail exposure inside diversified parents.

Major private and other owners

• See's Candies — a wholly owned Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary and the industry's gold standard: 200+ stores, roughly $400+ million in annual sales and strong pre-tax profit on very little capital — the classic "pricing power" business Buffett holds up as a model acquisition [14].
• Mars, Incorporated (private, family-owned) — runs the M&M's flagship "World" stores (Las Vegas, New York, Orlando, London), pure experiential retail on top of a wholesale confectionery empire [15].
• Ferrero Group (private, family-owned; Nutella, Kinder, Ferrero Rocher) — owns Fannie May, acquired in 2017 with ~79 Midwest chocolate shops, mainly around Chicago [16].
• Lolli & Pops — a specialty retailer owned by investment platform TerraMar Capital; it acquired Hammond's Candies, an example of private-equity roll-up in the channel [20].
• Kilwins (private franchise) — chocolate, fudge, and ice-cream stores commonly owned and operated by franchisees [21].
• Nuts.com and Sahadi's — family-owned nut and specialty-food retailers that anchor the nut half of the code [22][23].
• Dylan's Candy Bar (owned by Dylan Lauren) and restructured players like Sugarfina (reorganized out of a 2019 Chapter 11) round out the boutique tier [24][25].

5. How the money works

Owners in this industry make money in one of a few ways, and the metrics differ by model.

• Inventory-led specialty retail. Buy finished goods, sell at a markup; profitability turns on gross margin, inventory turns, markdowns, spoilage, and shrink. Candy and chocolate carry high gross margins — a well-run specialty store often keeps 50%+ of the retail price as gross profit — and the job is to convert that into store-level profit after rent, labor, and inventory.
• Experience-led retail. In-store preparation, aroma, sampling, and destination locations support higher prices but demand more labor and capital. Flagship formats (M&M's World, Hershey's Chocolate World) monetize foot traffic and photos as much as candy [11][15].
• Franchising. The franchisor earns royalties (a percentage of each franchisee's sales), franchise and area-development fees, and — for a vertically integrated system — the margin on product it manufactures and sells to franchisees, while franchisees fund most of the store investment and operating risk. Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory is the template: it makes money less from selling candy to shoppers than from its franchise network and its chocolate-and-ingredients supply to franchisees [8].
• Omnichannel and integrated manufacturing. Websites support gifting, repeat and corporate orders, and geographic reach; owning production improves control and supply security but adds factory, commodity, and operational risk.

Metrics that matter. Same-store sales, traffic and conversion, average transaction value, gross margin after promotions, store contribution margin, occupancy and labor as a share of sales, inventory turns and spoilage, and new-store payback. Because footprints are small and locations expensive (malls, airports, tourist streets), sales per square foot is decisive. For franchisors, watch unit count and net new openings, the royalty rate, and — critically — franchisee-level profitability, since unprofitable franchisees close and stop paying royalties. For digital sales, track repeat-purchase rate, fulfillment cost, and customer-acquisition cost.

Seasonality is central. The "big four" candy seasons — Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween, and the winter holidays — drive a large share of category sales, so working capital and staffing swing hard around a few weeks a year; public filings flag holiday timing as material to results [2][8][18]. The See's benchmark shows the ceiling: modest, slow unit growth, but strong brand loyalty, real pricing power, and high returns on almost no incremental capital [14]. Most stores never reach that — it is a brand-and-execution outcome, not a structural feature of the channel. RMCF's recent net loss (a ~$6.1 million loss in fiscal 2025 on ~$29.6M revenue) shows how thin the economics can get at sub-scale, even asset-light [8].

6. What drives demand

• Occasion and gifting. This is a gift and occasion business as much as a snack business. The four big seasons dominate the calendar, and Valentine's Day and the winter holidays skew toward exactly the premium boxed-chocolate assortments specialty stores sell [2]. Halloween alone drew an estimated ~$3.6 billion in U.S. candy sales in 2024 — mostly through mass channels, but it lifts the whole category [26]. Tourism and corporate gifting add to the mix.
• Affordable indulgence. Candy is a small-ticket treat, which historically makes it fairly resilient in downturns — consumers trade down within candy (smaller packs, fewer units) before cutting it out; ~98% of shoppers bought confectionery in 2024 [2].
• Premiumization and "better-for-you." Growth skews toward premium, artisanal, single-origin, and dark chocolate, plus curated gift boxes and novelty packaging — the higher-margin products specialty stores are built to sell [2].
• Nuts as snacks and ingredients. The nut half of the code rides health, protein, baking, and trail-mix demand — a broader base than candy alone. Crop conditions and supply affect nut availability and price [33].
• Experience and innovation. Destination stores, theatrical preparation, seasonal and licensed flavors, and sugar-free lines create incremental demand and give shoppers a reason to visit a store rather than an aisle.
• Omnichannel convenience. E-commerce was ~16.9% of total U.S. retail sales in early 2026 — a figure that covers all retail, not this code specifically, but signals the gifting-and-repeat channel specialty operators increasingly need [32].

Looking forward, the debated swing factor is health and GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) weight-loss drugs (e.g., semaglutide): whether appetite-suppressing medications meaningfully dent indulgent-snack demand is unresolved — flagged as a risk by operators (see Section 9), not yet a proven drag.

7. Regulation

For a store that buys and resells packaged candy and nuts, regulation is moderate but real:

• Food safety (FDA). Retail food operations are governed largely through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Food Code, a model that state, local, tribal, and territorial authorities adopt to regulate retail food safety, on top of local permits, inspections, sanitation, zoning, and weights-and-measures rules for bulk sales [27].
• Allergen labeling — unusually central here. Because "nut" is in the name, allergen exposure is high. Under the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act (FALCPA), tree nuts and peanuts are two of the nine major allergens that must be declared; the Food Allergy Safety, Treatment, Education, and Research (FASTER) Act added sesame as the ninth in 2021. Candy is frequently made on shared lines, creating real recall and liability exposure [28].
• Imports (FSMA). Retailers that import or repack products may fall under the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), including the Foreign Supplier Verification Program (FSVP) for covered importers — relevant because much specialty chocolate and many nuts are sourced abroad [29].
• Sales-tax quirks. Candy's taxability varies by state; several states tax "candy" differently from "food," and the widely used definition excludes items containing flour — a genuine compliance oddity (why one chocolate bar can be taxed differently from a similar one).
• Franchise regulation. Franchisors like RMCF and Kilwins must comply with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Franchise Rule, delivering a Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) to a prospective franchisee at least 14 days before signing or payment; some states add registration and relationship requirements [30].
• Trade and tariffs (forward-looking). Because cocoa and much specialty chocolate are imported, tariff policy and import costs feed directly into shelf prices — an active risk given recent trade tensions [31].

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

The store-level market is fragmented (top-four firms ~26% of receipts; top fifty ~52.4%), and the barriers to opening a candy store are low [3]. But the barriers to building a durable brand are high, and that is where the money and the consolidation are. Competition runs across local authenticity and product curation, brand recognition and loyalty, location and occupancy cost, wholesale purchasing and logistics, seasonal merchandising, digital marketing and fulfillment, and franchise support.

Ownership of the premium end has steadily concentrated into a few global groups: Lindt rolled up Ghirardelli (1998) and Russell Stover (2014); Ferrero acquired Fannie May (2017) amid a broader U.S. buying spree; and Berkshire has held See's since 1972 [10][14][16]. At the specialty-retail tier, consolidation shows up as private-equity roll-ups and regional-brand acquisitions — Lolli & Pops (TerraMar Capital) acquiring Hammond's Candies, and BBX Capital consolidating IT'SUGAR within its confectionery holdings [12][20]. Mid-tier players are fragile: Sugarfina went through Chapter 11 in 2019, and IT'SUGAR itself filed for bankruptcy protection in 2020 before being reorganized under BBX [12][25]. The competitive squeeze comes from two sides — mass and convenience channels on price and impulse, and direct-to-consumer (DTC) e-commerce on gifting convenience. Specialty stores defend with experience, freshness, brand, and the gift occasion — the things a supermarket aisle can't replicate. The concentration data suggest a market that is fragmented but scalable; comparisons are imperfect because large retailers and online sellers may be classified elsewhere.

9. Risks

• Input-cost shock. Cocoa hit record highs — roughly $12,000–13,000 per metric ton in late 2024, up from about $2,000 in 2022 — a historic supply crisis that crushed chocolate-maker margins and forced double-digit price increases (Lindt raised prices ~16% in early 2025) [31]. Sugar, nuts, dairy, packaging, energy, and freight add pressure; public filings identify cocoa and other agricultural inputs as material sources of volatility [11][19]. Retailers must pass this through or eat it.
• Weather and crop risk. Disease, extreme weather, water conditions, and harvest variability affect cocoa and nut supply and price [33].
• Price elasticity and trade-down. Premium candy is discretionary; when prices rise, consumers trade down, buy smaller packs, or reduce volume, and retailers may not fully pass costs through [2].
• Seasonality and working capital. With much of the profit made in a few weeks, a weak Valentine's or Halloween — or bad weather during it — can define the year, and poor forecasting leaves excess seasonal inventory and markdowns [2].
• Food safety and allergen liability. A recall, undeclared allergen, contamination, or labeling error can cause outsized financial and reputational damage — heightened by the nut/allergen profile [28].
• Real estate and labor. Mall-based and tourist-dependent stores are hostage to foot traffic and travel shocks (COVID hit this hard); rent, wages, staffing, and lease renewals determine whether a store earns an acceptable return.
• Franchise/execution risk. A franchisor can show attractive royalty economics while franchisees struggle; franchisee failures directly reduce royalties, as RMCF's recent losses illustrate [8].
• Consumer-health shifts. BBX Capital has explicitly identified changing diets and GLP-1 weight-loss medicines as potential demand risks for IT'SUGAR — a category-wide overhang, not yet quantified [12].
• Thin, illiquid public options / disclosure risk. The lone pure play is a micro-cap with a small float and a management transition (an interim CEO appointed in 2025), magnifying volatility [9]; private companies are hard to compare, and public ones often bundle retail with manufacturing or unrelated businesses.

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public routes (with caveats)

Use the Section 4 table as an exposure map, not a uniform peer group.

• Pure play: Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory (RMCF) is the only direct, U.S.-listed way to own the candy-store channel — but treat it as a speculative micro-cap turnaround, not a stable compounder [8][9].
• Direct-but-diversified: BBX Capital (BBXIA) for IT'SUGAR, and Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) for See's — both bundle the retail exposure inside a holding company where it is a small piece [12][14].
• Indirect / manufacturer-led: Hershey (HSY), Lindt (LISN/LISP), Tootsie Roll (TR), and Mondelēz (MDLZ) give premium-brand and supply-chain exposure but are manufacturers; 1-800-Flowers (FLWS) for confection gifting; and John B. Sanfilippo (JBSS) for the nut side, again as a maker/marketer [10][11][13][17][18][19]. None is a clean channel proxy.

The key public-market questions: is reported sales growth volume or price? Does gross margin survive commodity inflation? Are same-store sales healthy? Is capital producing attractive store returns?

Private routes (where the industry actually lives)

For most investors this is fundamentally a small-business and franchise play:

• Buy a franchise (RMCF, Kilwins, or another candy/chocolate concept) — asset-lighter for the franchisor, capital-and-labor-intensive for you as operator. Study the FDD, store-level earnings, closures and transfers, required suppliers, royalty and marketing fees, lease terms, working-capital needs, and actual franchisee profitability [30].
• Own or acquire an independent store or regional chain. Success hinges on location, brand, seasonal execution, and input-cost discipline. In diligence, normalize owner labor and rent, verify inventory aging, inspect seasonal cash flow, test allergen controls, and separate true repeat demand from holiday spikes.
• Back a consolidation platform or omnichannel brand, or finance inventory, equipment, or real estate. The durable premium brands, however, are held privately or inside conglomerates and are largely out of reach.

Outlook

The base case is modest nominal growth driven by pricing, premium products, gifting, and omnichannel expansion, with volume and margins staying uneven because of consumer trade-down, commodity swings, seasonality, and rent and labor costs. Near-term drivers to watch: the trajectory of cocoa prices (the single biggest margin variable, and the swing factor for whether 2026 margins recover) [31]; the strength of the Valentine's/Easter/Halloween/holiday seasons [2]; tariff and trade policy on imported cocoa and chocolate [31]; tourism and mall foot traffic for flagship formats; and whether premiumization or health-driven trade-down (including GLP-1 effects) wins at the margin [12]. The strongest businesses will be those with differentiated brands, destination locations, repeat digital customers, disciplined buying, reliable suppliers, and demonstrable store-level cash flow — where owners are rewarded far more for brand and execution than for simply being in the business. Treat NAICS 445292 as a useful map of specialty retail, not a complete measure of U.S. confectionery or nut demand.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau, "2022 NAICS Definition — 445292 Confectionery and Nut Retailers," 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=445292&input=445292&year=2022
2. National Confectioners Association, "State of Treating 2025 / U.S. confectionery sales surpass $54 billion in 2024," 2025. https://candyusa.com/state-of-treating-2025/
3. U.S. Census Bureau, "2022 Economic Census — Concentration of Largest Firms (firms, receipts, CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50, HHI suppressed), NAICS 445292," 2025. https://data.census.gov/table/ECNSIZE2022.EC2200SIZECONCEN?q=EC2200SIZECONCEN
4. U.S. Census Bureau, "County Business Patterns 2023 — NAICS 445292 (establishments, employment, payroll)," 2025. https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/2023/econ/cbp/2023-cbp.html
5. U.S. Census Bureau, "County Business Patterns Methodology" (employer-only coverage), 2026. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/technical-documentation/methodology.html
6. U.S. Census Bureau, "Nonemployer Statistics," 2026. https://www.census.gov/econ/overview/mu0500.html
7. U.S. Small Business Administration, "Table of Small Business Size Standards (NAICS 445292 = $19.5M)," 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
8. Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, "Fiscal Year 2025 Form 10-K / Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year Results," 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1616262/000095017025088556/rmcf-20250228.htm
9. StockAnalysis / WallStreetZen, "Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory (RMCF) — market cap and financials," 2025. https://www.wallstreetzen.com/stocks/us/nasdaq/rmcf
10. Lindt & Sprüngli — brand portfolio (Ghirardelli, Russell Stover) and Integrated Annual Report; CSP Daily News, "Lindt & Sprüngli buying Russell Stover," 2014. https://www.cspdailynews.com/snacks-candy/lindt-sprungli-buying-russell-stover
11. The Hershey Company, "2025 Form 10-K," and "Hershey's Chocolate World," 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/47111/000162828026008586/hsy-20251231.htm
12. BBX Capital, "2024 Form 10-K" (IT'SUGAR / BBX Sweet Holdings; GLP-1 and dietary-shift risk factors), 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1814974/000143774925008868/bbxi20241231_10k.htm
13. John B. Sanfilippo & Son, Inc. — company/investor profile (Fisher, Squirrel, Orchard Valley Harvest), 2025. https://www.jbssinc.com/
14. Berkshire Hathaway, "2024 Form 10-K," and See's Candies overview, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1067983/000095017025025210/brka-20241231.htm
15. Tasting Table, "Facts about NYC's M&M's Store" (M&M's World flagships), and Mars, Incorporated company history, 2024–2026. https://www.tastingtable.com/1752333/nyc-mm-store-facts/
16. CSP Daily News, "Ferrero International acquires Fannie May" (~79 retail stores), 2017. https://www.cspdailynews.com/snacks-candy/ferrero-international-acquires-fannie-may
17. 1-800-Flowers.com, Inc. — brand portfolio (Harry & David, The Popcorn Factory, Cheryl's), 2025. https://www.1800flowersinc.com/
18. Tootsie Roll Industries, "2025 Form 10-K," 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/98677/000110465926021621/tr-20251231x10k.htm
19. Mondelēz International, "2025 Form 10-K," 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1103982/000162828026005345/mdlz-20251231.htm
20. Lolli & Pops, "Lolli & Pops, a portfolio company of TerraMar Capital, acquires Hammond's Candies," 2024. https://www.lolliandpops.com/blogs/news/lolli-pops-a-portfolio-company-of-terramar-capital-acquires-hammond-s-candies
21. Kilwins Chocolates Franchise, LLC — company/franchise site, 2026. https://www.kilwins.com/
22. Nuts.com — family-owned nut and snack retailer, company site, 2026. https://nuts.com/
23. Sahadi's — family-owned specialty-food and nut retailer, "About," 2026. https://sahadis.com/pages/about
24. Wikipedia, "Dylan's Candy Bar," 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan%27s_Candy_Bar
25. ConfectioneryNews, "Sugarfina files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy," 2019. https://www.confectionerynews.com/Article/2019/09/25/Sugarfina-luxury-US-candy-store-files-for-bankruptcy/
26. Statista, "U.S. Halloween candy spending 2024," 2024. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1305961/halloween-candy-spending-us/
27. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, "FDA Food Code," 2026. https://www.fda.gov/food/retail-food-protection/fda-food-code
28. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, "Food Allergies" — FALCPA and FASTER Act (sesame, ninth major allergen), 2026. https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critical-foods/food-allergies
29. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, "FSMA Final Rule on Foreign Supplier Verification Programs (FSVP)," 2026. https://www.fda.gov/food/food-safety-modernization-act-fsma/fsma-final-rule-foreign-supplier-verification-programs-fsvp-importers-food-humans-and-animals
30. U.S. Federal Trade Commission, "The Franchise Rule (16 CFR 436) / A Consumer's Guide to Buying a Franchise" (FDD, 14-day rule), current. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/consumers-guide-buying-franchise
31. ConfectioneryNews, "Cocoa prices hit record highs; industry adapts," 2025. https://www.confectionerynews.com/Article/2025/01/17/cocoa-prices-hit-record-highs-industry-adapts/
32. U.S. Census Bureau, "Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales" (all-retail e-commerce share), 2026. https://www.census.gov/retail/ecommerce.html
33. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, "Fruit and Tree Nuts Outlook," 2026. https://www.ers.usda.gov/media/20866/fts-384.pdf