Why Candy Shops Are Multiplying Across New York City

Across New York City and its surrounding suburbs, candy stores are multiplying even as overall consumer confidence in the United States sits near historic lows. While many retail categories are struggling through an uncertain economy, this one niche keeps expanding.

Mitchell Cohen has a theory about why. As the third-generation owner of Economy Candy on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, he has watched shoppers keep buying sweets no matter how tight money gets. “The dollar isn’t going as far these days,” he says. “Inflation, uncertainty, all that, but there’s always candy.”

Economy Candy itself is a product of hard times. It opened in 1937, near the close of the Great Depression, originally as a hat and shoe repair business that sold candy from a cart out front to bring in extra cash. When customers stopped paying to get their belongings fixed, Cohen’s grandfather pivoted entirely toward what people would still spend on — inexpensive treats. Eighty-nine years on, the shop is still thriving.

Official figures show retail sales overall are still climbing, up 4.9% in April compared with a year earlier, yet a closely watched survey found that US consumer sentiment slumped to a fresh all-time low in May.

Kate Bolger, who is preparing to open The Village Confectionery in Sleepy Hollow — the Hudson Valley town roughly 28 miles north of the city made famous by its 19th-century ghost story — agrees with Cohen’s reasoning. Because candy is so cheap, she says, “everyone can partake” even when budgets are squeezed. A former film producer, Bolger argues shoppers who are avoiding big purchases will still happily spend on a small treat, an idea closely tied to the “lipstick effect,” a theory popularised in the early 2000s describing how people substitute affordable indulgences for costlier ones they can no longer justify.

Higher up the market, the Swedish-founded chain BonBon now runs five locations across Manhattan and Brooklyn plus one in the Hamptons that opened last summer, with a Greenwich, Connecticut branch planned for this summer. Co-founder Leo Schaltz says the company deliberately avoids busy main streets. “You wouldn’t want to be on Broadway,” he says, preferring side streets where “you don’t want to overpay for rent, and it’s easier to make a space feel cozy when it’s smaller.” He credits part of the brand’s appeal to “little, quirky details,” including staff uniforms modelled on a Stockholm restaurant. Fellow Swedish chain Candy King opened its first US store in Manhattan in December.

In Fort Greene, Brooklyn, Cat Cirino opened Candor Candy’s in March, supplementing sales with pantry goods like granola and jerky from independent makers. Candy, she notes, has practical advantages too — a long shelf life, no need for refrigeration, and a pick-and-mix format that puts customers to work filling their own bags.

Still, the business isn’t without headwinds. Cohen says tariffs imposed on imports and rising shipping costs — partly driven by fuel price increases tied to the US-Israeli conflict with Iran — have pushed up his wholesale prices. A Hershey bar that cost his store about 62 cents before the pandemic now runs more than a dollar, since the chocolate’s cocoa still comes from abroad. One UK supplier, he says, stopped shipping to the US altogether after losing too much to customs fees. Even so, Cohen has absorbed most of the increases without raising prices much, and his sales keep climbing. As he puts it, “a little candy goes a long way.”

Source: BBC News