In center of Brooklyn, Swedish Candy Store has taken the city—and its many, many chronically online residents—by storm. Candy and all things sugary are all the rage on TikTok, from #watertok to #candysalad, sour Nerds Gummy Clusters to a $5-a-piece Swedish imported morsel, eating sweet treats (and filming yourself doing it) are definitely in style.
Swedish candy is all the sugar-induced rage right now.
The Swedish candy store opened its first location in the Lower East Side back in 2022, founded by two Swedish siblings ages 10 and 12 who wanted to bring all the sweet, sour, and salty confections of their home country to New York City. It was all good and normal until the spring of 2022 when lines began to form outside the blue and yellow candy store in the late hours of the night and so did the hype. People began filming and posting videos of their Swedish Candy Store experiences and becoming Swedish candy experts. Apart from their brick-and-mortar locations, they also ship their candy all over the world—good news for all those who want to post a Swedish Candy Store candy haul but aren’t near the Big Apple.
The #SwedishCandyStore tag has over 210,000 posts and the #swedishcandy tag has over 150,000 posts on TikTok. Some #tastetest style videos, where creators film themselves tasting and reviewing SwedishCandyStore’s delicious treats, garner up to 9.2 million views. These numbers translate into real-time business for SwedishCandyStore, whose store often runs out of best-selling items on weekends. I have a sweet tooth and I love all things sugar— but I was hesitant to make the trip to SwedishCandyStore in fear of waiting in line for longer than 45 minutes during a heat wave. Aside from their locations in the Lower East Side, Williamsburg, and the Upper East Side, the confectionery brand opened up their Red Hook warehouse space to the public in April.
Viral or not, the place is magical (even during scorching heat). The interior is decorated in the cheery logo, posters of Swedish Bubs Skulls, and the big carts of candies that come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Based on my TikTok research, I knew that I was looking for sour skulls, Swedish fish, and marshmallows— I got to scooping. Black licorice is a source of contention between many American candy lovers and Swedish candy aficionados. It’s a classic Scandinavian treat made using sugar, starch, wheat flour, dried licorice root extract, and salmiak powder (which is what makes it salty), according to Vice. Yes, you read that right, it’s salty candy. As I scooped black licorice into my personal yellow baggy.
If you’ve seen the TikToks, you’ve also seen the price tags: some people pay upwards of $50 for a trip to Swedish Candy Store. They charge you by weight, and luckily, since I got around 10 pieces of candy, my total was just under $12. I took a seat at their outdoor benches and got to sampling.
I got my hands on the Bubs Wild Strawberry/Pomegranate Ovals (which I’ve seen featured in many, many videos), which struck a good balance of chewy, sour, and sweet. This wasn’t my personal favorite but it’s nice to chomp on a candy that is perfectly chewy and doesn’t taste like plastic and red-40.
It gets tricky when we start talking about the marshmallows. Their classic vanilla marshmallow was delightful, fluffy and packed with subtle flavor, as a marshmallow should be. Their banana marshmallow, which is both shaped and colored like the yellow fruit, tasted like the typical banana extract Laffy Taffy slap-in-your-face flavor but the texture was, well, completely different than I expected: Chewier, stretchier, and softer.
Despite my skepticism, both the SwedishCandyStore shop itself and the candy were delightful and tasty. The viral videos definitely live up to the hype, but there’s still absolutely no way I would ever wait in line longer than 25 minutes nor pay more than $30 for a bag of the Swedish goodies. And so: I declare that SwedishCandyStore is a perfectly rated snack shop.
If you’re reading this and you have a suggestion for a Snack Shop in the city that I must visit and (honestly) rate, leave a comment here or on our Snack Shop TikTok video. I love suggestions!
