TikTok is driving a Swedish candy boom

It’s 2024, and Aaron Carter’s 20+-year-old song “I Want Candy” has never been more relevant.

TikTok has identified 120+ million videos as Swedish candy reviews, with most of those posted over the past seven-and-a-half months. And all this online attention is driving real-world results, per a new Bloomberg report:

• BonBon, a chain of stores in NYC that sells colorful candy imported from Scandinavia, has seen its number of daily orders grow 15x since January.
• Sweetish, an incredibly named Swedish candy shop in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, has needed to expand its team from 12 to 26 people to fulfill the onslaught of orders.
• LA’s Sockerbit and Toronto’s online-based Sukker Baby have also experienced an uptick in orders (and wait times), as have other shops across the US.

This high demand is squeezing supply chains. Bubs, a popular Swedish brand that makes flavored oval gummies, was forced to stop exporting its candy to any new customers in February as it works to increase manufacturing capacity.

What’s so attractive about Swedish candy? While relatively pricey – sometimes north of $18/lb – the ingredients are generally higher quality than, say, Skittles or Starbursts; most Swedish gummies are vegan, gluten-free, allergen-friendly, and aesthetically pleasing, and their sweetness comes mostly from sugar instead of corn syrup, per Bloomberg.

💸 Zoom out: This isn’t the first time TikTok has been responsible for driving commerce on a large scale. Since 2018, sales of young adult fiction (+50%) and adult fiction (+42%) have significantly outpaced overall book sales (+10%), a phenomenon largely attributed to BookTok.