St. Charles-based lifestyle blogger Nicole Regan and her mother, Cindy Nelson, decorated their porches with pumpkins for years, often making elaborate fall-themed displays. Their hobby has now become a booming seasonal business in the Chicago area.
Regan and her parents founded Perfect Pumpkins Chicago in 2022. The business creates custom-designed pumpkin displays for homeowners to display outside, often on porches, and including a variety of pumpkins, hay bales and gourds. Since its launch, business has doubled every year. Regan said the company is struggling to keep up with demand.
“The fall industry is the new Christmas,” she said. “You start seeing the fall decorations out earlier and earlier every year. We are seeing Halloween in June now, it feels like.”
Small businesses offering pumpkin “concierge” services have become massively popular with Chicago area companies selling out of their design packages, which can cost more than $1,000. Most packages include delivery and styling, with clean-up at an additional cost.
Fall-themed decorating services also have become wildly popular in states like Texas and Virginia.
Owners of Chicago’s pumpkin concierge businesses credit Texas-based entrepreneur Heather Torres for popularizing the idea. Torres founded Porch Pumpkins in 2020, offering customers in the Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston area lavish fall porch displays ranging from $375 to $1,350. In 2024, Torres began coaching other aspiring business owners on how to start a pumpkin decorating business, she told Business Insider.
Regan said she believes Perfect Pumpkins Chicago was the first to launch in the area, and it mainly serves the North Shore and the west suburbs.
Perfect Pumpkins Chicago packages range from $545 to $1,400. The lowest-priced service includes an assortment of 25 pumpkins and a hay bale. The top package offers 82 pumpkins in different colors and sizes with four hay bales. And for $400, customers can get 25 pumpkins delivered, without styling.
“We have doubled our fall business year after year, and we sell out early and cannot even keep up with the demand,” Regan said. “It’s just boomed.”
This year, Perfect Pumpkins Chicago started taking orders July 31 and sold out by mid-August. The family decided to reopen sales after its waiting list grew, but it quickly sold out again in September. This year, the company has decorated homes in 27 Chicago suburbs. The company is in business from about September to November, and hires a crew of 12 that includes a logistics and delivery team plus stylists.
“It’s been like [this] every year,” Nelson said. “We expand then it blows up again.”
“People are busy,” Regan said. “We’ve got full-time working parents who just love the ease of leaving and coming back to this beautiful, magical fall porch, and it makes them happy every time they pull in the driveway.”
Social media also plays a role in the service’s appeal, she said.
“People are really into investing in their homes and bringing experiences to their own front door, literally and figuratively. … I also believe with Instagram, people love to post these beautiful aesthetic backgrounds of their home, and it’s almost like it sells itself.”
She said the firm’s connections with pumpkin growers around the Midwest to source “high-end pumpkins” keep customers coming back. Its pumpkins are often oversized and in better shape than what someone would find at the grocery store, she said.
“Even if you were trying to do this yourself, you’re not going to be able to do a one-stop shop anywhere. It’s intensive labor, and we’re able to streamline that process,” she said.
Lindsey Waichulis, an Elmhurst mom of four and self-proclaimed Halloween enthusiast, bought the priciest package from Perfect Pumpkins this year.
“My kids love it and are used to the decorations inside and outside of our home. … We no longer go to [pumpkin patches] because it is delivered to our home,” she said. “We go all out as a family to decorate our home … for the holiday. We started last year, and then I needed [Regan] back again this year, of course.”
Private voice coach Allison Rozsa Evans was looking for a side hustle last year when she noticed the pumpkin concierge trend.
“I’m a very creative person, and I have been doing this kind of thing for a very long time just not as a business,” Evans said. “[I saw] some things online, and I thought, ‘Well, I can do that.’”
Evans launched Porch Pumpkin Creations in 2024 and got her first order within two hours of launching her website. She offers packages from $365 to $1,375, all with a mix of large pumpkins, white pumpkins and pie pumpkins, which are smaller and often used for cooking and baking.
“It started with just me and my vehicle, and this year, I’ve hired people and worked with a trucking company to help me deliver all of the pumpkins,” Evans said. This fall, she hired five seasonal workers.
“I would say it exceeded my expectations for a side hustle,” she said.
Brittany Woods, owner of Chi Pumpkins, started her business this year. Woods, a sales manager, said she has been “very surprised” at its success, since deliveries started in September.
She said her husband, parents and in-laws have stepped in to help with everything from hand washing pumpkins to helping with deliveries to a customer’s home.
Chi Pumpkins offers packages ranging from $325 to $1,300, with the top packages including 120 pumpkins and five hay bales.
“When we deliver, we see children jumping with literal joy and excitement in the windows to see their pumpkins,” she said.
