With hours to go before Valentine’s Day, holiday traffic seems to be down this year at Haven’s Candies, said owner Erin Collins.

“It’s a lower number of people shopping,” Collins said on a Thursday phone call. “People are spending about what they would normally spend or maybe a little more, but it’s less people.”

The Westbrook store, which offers heart-shaped chocolates and hand-dipped strawberries, relies heavily on walk-in customers, Collins said. And while the majority of sales happen on the holiday itself or the day before, the pace of preorders is down compared to last year, she said.

Collins attributed the decline to general anxieties about rising costs.

“I definitely think people are more price conscious,” Collins said. “People are picking and choosing the things that they want to spend money on.”

On average, Americans are planning to spend about 26% less on Valentine’s Day gifts this year than they did last year, according to a Lending Tree survey released this month. One quarter of those surveyed said they were considering taking on debt to pay for the holiday.

At the same time, the costs of candy, high-end dinners and other classic gifts are up this year, according to an analysis by the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank.

The prices of roses and chocolates are up by double-digit percentages since last year, well outpacing the overall rate of inflation, according to the foundation. Those hikes are driven in part by tariffs on major flower exporters like Colombia and the lingering effects of a 2024 cocoa shortage, Reuters has reported.

At Dean’s Sweets in Portland, co-owner Kristin Thalheimer Bingham said Thursday that it was too early to predict how the holiday would go. But she said the store saw a bit of a slump around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Though the number of purchases tracked with years prior, many customers opted for smaller packages to cut costs, she said.

“For Valentine’s Day, we seem to be on track, and people are doing their usual kind of splurge this time of year because it’s fun and it’s festive,” Thalheimer Bingham said.

But she emphasized that the full picture wouldn’t be clear until Sunday, after the V-Day rush.

Several chocolatiers echoed that sentiment, saying they would not know the full picture of Valentine’s sales until the end of the holiday. Part of that is customers’ desire to to keep perishable gifts fresh.

Part of it is their panic.

John DeGrinney, co-owner of Len Libby Candies in Scarborough, said Feb. 14 is “our biggest day by far,” with about 90% of holiday orders taking place day-of.

The usual clientele?

“Frantic men running around trying to get a gift,” DeGrinney said. “Literally, people wait until the last day to get their strawberries.”

At Harbor Candies in Ogunquit, co-owner Colleen Osselaer said she expects to do as much business in the last hour of Valentine’s Day as the rest of the week combined.

“It’s a panic holiday,” she said, with a laugh. “Our shop will be filled with men, bug-eyed, thinking ‘Oh crap! It’s Valentine’s Day, and I’ve got to get a gift!'”