Halloween candy tips from a chef and father of 4: 'Make it worth it'

Andrew Gruel isn't just a chef and founder of the American Gravy brand. He's also a father of four.

"So, I'm always dealing with the prospect of a crazy sugar high on Halloween," Gruel told Fox News Digital in a Zoom interview from the kitchen of his Southern California home. (See the video at the top of this article.)

Gruel said he's long preferred chocolates to hard candies – and he encourages his children to be selective, too, when trick-or-treating.

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"You've got to get the right candy and make it worth it," he said. "Because you know for a fact that when you come home, Mom is like the federal government – she's going in and she's taxing 45% to 50% of that candy, guaranteed."

Here are three tips he shared with Fox News Digital ahead of Halloween.

One thing Gruel wants all families to know is how to save on Halloween candy. He said one way to do that is by shopping at restaurant supply stores.

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"Typically, Restaurant Depot is one of the names of a big restaurant supply store," Gruel said. 

"A couple of years before the pandemic, they wouldn't let you in unless you had a restaurant business license. But after the pandemic, you can get in there yourself and you can actually buy the full-size candy bars for the price of the small ones leading into Halloween."

Other restaurant supply stores that are open to the public include California-based Smart & Final. 

BJ's, Costco and Sam's Warehouse are popular wholesale clubs where shoppers can also buy candy in bulk. But annual membership is required to shop at these stores.

Halloween means a tough balancing act when it comes to regulating your children's candy intake, Gruel admitted.

"But we tell our kids before they go out, 'Look, you guys are basically going to be able to pick 10 or 20 of the best candies in your bag,'" he said, acknowledging that the kids are likely to have more than that along the way as they're trick-or-treating.

The rest of the candy, he said, will be spaced out over the next few weeks or shared with others who work at his restaurant.

"They get a little bit at a time, so that it's not the night of — when they're in that sugar high — you're trying to go through that hard negotiation process with them," Gruel said of his kids.

Although Gruel prefers chocolate to hard candies, he doesn't mind coming across a Sugar Daddy in his kids' Halloween stash.

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One of the reasons the milk caramel lollipop is among Gruel's favorite of the hard candies is because of what can be done with it at home.

He shared one quick and easy trick that parents can do to pair the candy with a healthy fruit.

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"You can actually put those in a microwave and melt them down and then dip pieces of apple in the Sugar Daddy and put some hard candy on the outside," Gruel said.

"And you get yourself the perfect candied apple."