Crystal Regehr Westergard
- A Canadian woman had to give away 133,000 candy bars for free, reports said.
- Crystal Regehr Westergard was bombarded with the candy, which had an expiry date of June this year.
- Westergard donated the bars when a looming expiry date meant stores refused to accept them.
After a supply-chain blunder left her with far too many, a Canadian businesswoman was forced to give away 133,000 candy bars before they expired, reports said.
Crystal Regehr Westergard, a physiotherapist, started a candy company as a side hustle in 2018 to bring back old favorites that companies had long stopped producing.
Through her company Canadian Candy Nostalgia, Westergard first brought back Cuban Lunch, a candy dating back to World War II.
She then started selling Rum & Butter, a chocolate treat with a rum-flavored center that was discontinued in 1996. This move proved to be a major success, BBC News reported, and the candy sold more than a million bars in its first round of reproduction.
Westergard said she increased her order for the candy bar. But when the pandemic hit, the company making Rum & Butter bars for her ran into production problems, according to the Globe and Mail.
When operations eventually fully resumed, it processed her outstanding order all at once.
In Westergard's own version of a "bullwhip effect" that has hit global-supply chains in recent years, about 5,500 boxes containing 133,000 Rum & Butter chocolate bars suddenly bombarded her last June.
They all had the same expiration date of June 2023. While Canadian regulations don't require expiry dates on candy, the self-imposed date on the bars meant stores stopped accepting them in January, BBC News reported.
"It's immense," Westergard told the Globe and the Mail. "If I think about it too much, I'll start to shake."
She's struggled to give away the retro candy bars, even for free. The shipment was stored in a food warehouse in Calgary, Alberta, a three-hour drive from her home, in massive pallets that were difficult to separate.
Food banks in Calgary wouldn't accept any donations due to their no-candy policies.
But after the Globe and Mail published its story, requests for the bars inundated Westergard.
She was able to give away all her bars in bulk to several organizations, including Calgary's drop-in center for homeless people, a Ukrainian church helping newly arrived refugees, and a fire department in Saskatchewan, the BBC reported.
Some food banks also took them despite their no-candy policies, Westergard said.