Is later Super Bowl hurting Valentine’s Day sales?

McHenry County area chocolate shops, restaurants and florists expect to do very well Tuesday as customers load up on Valentine’s Day presents.

But now that the holiday bumps up against the Super Bowl, some of business owners are wondering if the timing is impacting their sales.

At Apple Creek Flowers in Woodstock, the manager was too busy to take a phone call. But at McHenry’s Locker’s Flowers, it seems people may have forgotten to order their flowers prior to Sunday’s game.

“A lot of them put it off until the last minute,” said Jan Bourassa, a sales clerk at Locker’s. While no callers on Monday specifically mentioned the Super Bowl as a reason for the late order, many still asked if they had time to get in on Tuesday’s delivery window, she said.

For the 2021-22 season, the Super Bowl was moved to the second Sunday in February. Last year, the game was on Feb. 13, just a day before the holiday.

Two area chocolate shops said it definitely felt like people passed them this season.

“Starting last year when the Super Bowl was changed to Valentine’s Day weekend, we experienced an extreme and sudden drop in sales,” said Katie Anderson of Anderson’s Candy Shop in Richmond. She is part of the fourth generation of candy makers there.

“I’m sitting here in my shop, the day before Valentines Day, ... which normally requires five people behind the counter to staff,” Anderson said. “I have hardly needed two people to wait on the shop all day.”

Melanie Hiser at Mellie’s Chocolate & Co. in Crystal Lake agreed. On Sunday, the shop was busier until about 5 p.m., but then fell off, Hiser said. Preorders were also down leading into the weekend.

”We are usually deep in chocolate-dipped strawberries and chocolate-dipped raspberries, English toffee and sea salt caramels,” Hiser said.

“We are hoping to make it up today and tomorrow, ... getting them at the last minute before getting themselves into the doghouse,” she said.

Both Hiser and Anderson said they try to control inventory by making just enough candies to get through the holiday, but that the unusual drop in sales makes that harder to plan for.

“You have to do a lot of guesswork already based on weather and what day of the week the holiday falls. It was already a tricky dance to make your budget on Valentine’s Day, but we always knew we would at least make something,” Anderson said.

Hiser gets her berries from either Florida or California. “With berries, the cost is always changing, and honestly with global warming and disasters, it is affecting (prices) more.”

She also did not order many heart-shaped boxes this year, another casualty of the supply chain challenges, because of high prices. “We need somebody that makes them in the U.S. for cheaper prices,” she said.

Sunday’s game may have caused people who usually celebrate with their Valentine on the weekend opt to go out during the week, too, said Ziya Senturk, general manager at Algonquin’s Port Edward Restaurant.

There was a busy dinner crowd on Saturday, but on Sunday, “not much because the focus was on the Super Bowl,” Senturk said.

They did have an unexpected clientele, however, thanks to the Norge Winter Ski Jump Tournament in Fox River Grove, Senturk said. “So that had a tremendous turn out for us,” he said.