Pumpkin spice products on shelves

For eighteen years, from 2005 to 2022, US pet industry spending and pumpkin spice products on shelves grew in lockstep at r = 0.9656, confirming what anyone who has walked through a PetSmart in October already knows: the pumpkin spice industrial complex has penetrated every aisle of American retail, including the ones for animals. There are pumpkin spice dog biscuits. There are pumpkin spice cat treats. There may, for all anyone knows, be pumpkin spice fish food. The American pet and the American consumer are now indistinguishable in their seasonal flavor preferences, which is either heartwarming or alarming depending on your relationship to cinnamon.

US pet industry spending grew from roughly $36 billion in 2005 to over $136 billion by 2022, driven by pet humanization, premium products, and veterinary cost inflation. Pumpkin spice products expanded from a single Starbucks offering to thousands of SKUs across every retail category. Both are consumer spending growth stories across the same 18-year window, driven by American willingness to pay premiums for perceived quality and novelty. That pumpkin spice pet products actually exist makes this correlation partially self-fulfilling.

Eighteen years of consumer spending growth in two categories that literally overlap—there are pumpkin spice pet products—produces a correlation that is less spurious than usual. When the categories merge, the correlation stops being coincidental and starts being just obvious.