Key Takeaways
- Kelly Schultz, an vintage vendor by career, operates The Great Pumpkin Farm for about seven weeks a yr.
- Schultz had no farming expertise when he purchased the 85-acre property for about $650,000 in 1993.
- Today, the farm attracts more than 100,000 guests each fall with pumpkins, hayrides, dwell leisure and other sights.
About 33 years in the past, Kelly Schultz informed his associates and household that he was going to open a pumpkin farm.
“Everybody laughed at me,” he said in a new interview with CNBC Make It.
The endeavor was outside Schultz’s space of experience. He was a second-generation antiques vendor and didn’t know anything about farming. He purchased the small farm in Clarence, New York, anyway.
No one’s laughing at him now.
Schultz, 74, now runs The Great Pumpkin Farm, situated about 15 miles northeast of Buffalo. More than 100,000 people go to the seasonal attraction each fall.
The farm generated $2 million in income in 2025, according to financial paperwork reviewed by CNBC Make It. It operates for just seven weeks a yr.
This yr’s season runs from September 19 through October 31. Pumpkins are only half of the draw. Visitors can journey a pumpkin-themed practice, enter pie-eating contests or discover a five-acre corn maze. Weekend admission is $20, though some actions, including the corn maze, price further.
How he got began
Schultz had the concept to open a farm of his own after visiting a crowded pumpkin patch in upstate New York in the early Nineties. He noticed a easy operation with “muddy parking lots” and “not a whole lot of restrooms,” but there were still “a zillion people” searching and shopping for pumpkins anyway.
“I looked around, and I said, ‘I could do this, better than this,’” Schultz said.
When the former cattle farm next to his vintage store hit the market in 1993, Schultz purchased the 85-acre property for about $650,000, intent on reworking it into a pumpkin farm.
Schultz famous that more people go to the farm every yr.
“There are people that come here almost every weekend,” he said. “They love it so much, they just keep coming back.”
Americans are spending more on Halloween than ever before
For Schultz and other seasonal entrepreneurs, Halloween brings a short but profitable window of alternative.
According to the National Retail Federation’s annual Halloween survey, launched on September 22, Americans will spend about $13.5 billion celebrating the vacation in 2026, up from $13.1 billion last yr. The survey requested 7,889 customers about their Halloween plans.
Consumers expect to spend an average of $115.14 per particular person, with purchases ranging from costumes to decorations.
Halloween has become an important vacation for more people. Nearly three-quarters of customers surveyed, or 74%, plan to have fun this yr, in contrast with 68% in 2019.
Among those celebrating, 42% plan to carve pumpkins, and an an identical share plan to beautify their houses and yards. Handing out sweet stays the most well-liked custom, at 61%, adopted by dressing in costume, at 50%.
The gross sales alternative also begins effectively before October 31. Nearly half of Halloween consumers, 49%, said they deliberate to start shopping for in September or earlier, in contrast with 34% a decade in the past. Businesses have more of a likelihood to promote seasonal Halloween merchandise weeks before the vacation itself.
Key Takeaways
- Kelly Schultz, an vintage vendor by career, operates The Great Pumpkin Farm for about seven weeks a yr.
- Schultz had no farming expertise when he purchased the 85-acre property for about $650,000 in 1993.
- Today, the farm attracts more than 100,000 guests each fall with pumpkins, hayrides, dwell leisure and other sights.
About 33 years in the past, Kelly Schultz informed his associates and household that he was going to open a pumpkin farm.
“Everybody laughed at me,” he said in a new interview with CNBC Make It.
The endeavor was outside Schultz’s space of experience. He was a second-generation antiques vendor and didn’t know anything about farming. He purchased the small farm in Clarence, New York, anyway.