DoorDash Halloween candy trends for 2025 show Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups holding the top spot for a third consecutive year, even as sour flavours and decades-old confections make an unexpected charge up the rankings. The delivery platform analysed US orders placed between 1 October and Halloween 2025 to compile its annual breakdown of what Americans are actually dropping into treat bags.
Reese’s sat comfortably at No. 1, followed by Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bars, M&M’s, Snickers, and Nerds to round out the top five. Below that, the picture shifts. Skittles came in at sixth, with Airheads, Sour Patch Kids, Haribo and KitKat completing the national top ten.
Airheads and Haribo shake up the DoorDash Halloween candy rankings
Two of those entries are the real story in the top ten. Airheads climbed three places from tenth to seventh compared with the previous year’s data, while Haribo cracked the top ten for the first time. Haribo’s entry came at a cost: Twix, a perennial fixture, dropped out of the list entirely.
DoorDash consumer trends expert Cristen Milliner attributed part of the movement to a broader consumer appetite for intensity. The rise of sour candy and Takis (which became the platform’s top non-candy Halloween treat) points toward shoppers wanting more intense flavours, rather than automatically defaulting to something sweet, Milliner said.
The state-by-state map produced by DoorDash adds another layer of regional texture. New York and Rhode Island emerged as Kinder Bueno country, standing apart from much of the eastern seaboard, while California and Arizona remained firmly committed to Red Vines. Those pockets of regional loyalty suggest the national rankings only tell part of the story.
Old-school candy sees a strangely strong resurgence
Away from the headline rankings, the data contains figures that are harder to explain but difficult to ignore. Circus Peanuts, the foam-textured confection that many assumed had quietly retired, saw orders jump 350 per cent. Lemonhead rose 200 per cent, and Bit-O-Honey climbed 180 per cent. Even Dum-Dums, the lollipop staple of school fairs and bank counters, doubled in orders.
The retro resurgence does not appear to be coincidental. Alongside the push toward bolder, more abrasive flavour profiles, there seems to be an equal and opposite pull toward nostalgia, toward the candy your parents or grandparents recognised. Whether that reflects a genuine shift in taste or simply the novelty of ordering something you had not thought about in twenty years is a question the data cannot answer.
Candy corn, that most divisive of Halloween staples, recorded a 30 per cent rise in orders. Raisins, rather less glamorously, were up 60 per cent. Both figures will comfort different constituencies.
What the numbers suggest for Halloween 2025
Taken together, the DoorDash Halloween candy data for 2025 sketches a market pulling in two directions at once. The very top of the rankings is stable: chocolate-led, brand-familiar, and unlikely to surprise anyone who has stocked a bowl in the past decade. But the movement below that top five is real. Sour and fruity options are gaining ground year on year, old-school picks are finding an audience again, and Takis have colonised the non-candy category entirely.
Milliner’s read on the data frames the sour and spicy surge as the defining flavour trend, one that is reshaping what ends up in the bowl rather than just which chocolate bar outsells another. The Hershey Company‘s grip on the very top of the list, through both Reese’s and its milk chocolate bars, remains unbroken for now, but the rest of the ranking is considerably more fluid than it was three years ago.