Reese's is making a calculated daypart move into fall coffee season, partnering with The Nitro Bar to launch the Reese's Pumpkins PB Whip Latte — a peanut butter-forward LTO designed to compete with the pumpkin spice ritual that dominates café menus from August through October.
The beverage debuts at a New York City pop-up on September 14 and 15, then rolls to all Nitro Bar brick-and-mortar locations for a three-day window from September 18 to 20. A shareable at-home recipe releases September 14 to extend reach beyond the café footprint. The collaboration marks The Nitro Bar's first foray into New York City ahead of a planned 2027 market entry.
The Operator Angle
For foodservice operators watching ingredient-brand partnerships, the structure here is instructive. The Hershey Company (NYSE: HSY) is attaching America's No. 1 Halloween candy brand — Reese's ranked top-selling Halloween candy in the 10-week period ending November 2, 2025, per Circana data covering Total US MULO and Convenience — to a high-velocity independent coffee concept rather than a national chain. The Nitro Bar currently operates 3 locations (with 2 additional units in development) and more than 70 tap accounts across Rhode Island, a footprint that skews community-oriented and social-first. That profile matches the LTO's goal: drive earned media and shareability over broad unit reach.
Melissa Blette, Senior Brand Manager for the Reese's Brand at The Hershey Company, framed the play explicitly as a daypart disruption. "Fall coffee season gets a lot of attention, but it usually follows the same script," she said. "As the No. 1 Halloween candy, Reese's belongs in that conversation — so we're here to rewrite it." Audrey Finocchiaro, founder of The Nitro Bar, noted the collaboration allowed her brand to bring the chocolate and peanut butter flavor into a beverage format that feels "playful, unexpected and true to both brands."
Fall LTO Strategy
The limited-time offering lands inside a broader industrywide push to capture the Halloween daypart earlier in the calendar. Hershey's own research, conducted with Morning Consult, found Halloween has evolved into a season spanning roughly a third of the year, with consumers engaging through seasonal purchases and food rituals well before October. That behavioral shift gives foodservice operators and CPG brands alike a longer runway to monetize the holiday through menu activations, co-branded LTOs, and off-premise recipe content — all three of which this collaboration deploys simultaneously.
For specialty coffee operators, the branded ingredient partnership model carries meaningful implications for menu strategy and seasonal LTO execution. A short availability window — three days at retail café locations — creates scarcity-driven urgency and concentrates social traffic, a tactic independent coffee concepts have used to build outsized digital followings relative to unit count. The Nitro Bar's social-led operating model makes it a natural testbed for this kind of activation before Hershey considers scaling a similar approach with larger chain partners.
For chain buyers and foodservice procurement teams tracking CPG-to-café crossover, the Reese's x Nitro Bar collaboration signals continued appetite from major snack manufacturers to extend brand equity into the beverage daypart — particularly in the specialty coffee segment where consumer willingness to pay for premium, flavor-forward drinks remains elevated.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
