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A global shortage of candy made in Sweden, all thanks to a viral TikTok video? Stranger things have happened.
But that’s exactly what happened earlier this year, when TikTok influencer Marygrace Graves showed followers the sweets she picked up from a weekly visit to BonBon, a Swedish candy shop in New York.
“This is strawberry squid. It’s the first time I’ve had them, they’re delicious,” Graves told his followers in the January video, as if letting them in on a secret.
Well, the secret was out, and other TikTok users began making their own Swedish candy videos, resulting in millions of posts, a viral internet phenomenon, and an ongoing global shortage of the country’s prized sweets.
Graves’ viral traction in the original video included some candies being foamy and others making her teeth feel like they were going to break, she said. Some were oddly shaped, including a rubber rat that she held by the tail; and many were uniquely flavored, like a raspberry lemon sour gum that she approved of, and a grapefruit candy that she said made her nauseous.
All of them were imported from Sweden, a country known for the manufacture of high quality sweets.
What makes Swedish candies stand out is that they lean toward unusual shapes and flavors, and away from the additives typically found in American sweets, according to Michelina Jassal, owner of Swedish candy shop Karameller in Vancouver.
“No GMOs, no corn syrup, usually (fewer) ingredients than your conventional candy that you find in the grocery store,” Jassal said of the Scandinavian sweets. “You don’t get the stomach ache (feeling) you sometimes get with conventional candy.”
The shortage left Canadian importers scrambling to find supply.
Jessica Borchiver, who runs Swedish online candy store Sukker Baby from her home in Toronto, said an increasingly impatient (and increasingly American) clientele urged her to stock up on a brand in particular demand: Bubs Godis.
What had once been a steady business for Borchiver skyrocketed overnight. But the run on Bubs “turned everything upside down,” he said. “Everybody who was anybody wanted to get their hands on it.”
Swedish candy makers prioritize Nordic customers
Bubs Godis is one of Sweden’s largest candy manufacturing companies. As demand increased due to his sudden virality, he was forced to stop taking on new international customers, an ongoing policy at the end of December. The company was already selling out over the summer months when Sweden began its annual six-week factory vacation.
Any company would be delighted to see a sudden surge in international interest. But the makers of Bubs decided to take care of their own people first.
“We’ve had long-standing relationships with our customers in Sweden and the rest of the Nordic countries,” said Niclas Arnelin, director of international expansion at Orkla, the Swedish food and snack corporation that owns Bubs. “And we need to prioritize them now.”
They could also be their best customers: Swedes have a famous sweet tooth, eating up to 16 kilos of sweets each year, according to a spokesman for Business Swedish, a government- and business-owned organization that promotes Swedish exports.
The country has a long tradition called Saturday sweetsor “Saturday seeds”, in which families are known to load up on sweets. The custom was born out of a 1950s study by medical researchers who found that the nation’s dental health would improve if they limited candy consumption to one day per week.
Stockholm resident Linda Rose remembers when the custom became popular. With his own children, he held a similar ritual on Fridays.
But if there is currently a global shortage affecting the sweet community, the Swedes have been spared the pain.
“There is no shortage here,” he said. “None, no way.”
