Save our sweet shops

There are only so many times I can watch Lord Sugar swivelling in his chair and reusing put-downs from three seasons ago before enough’s enough, so I’ve dropped in and out of the latest series of The Apprentice. But one contestant that has caught my eye is Victoria Goulbourne, the flight attendant turned online sweet shop owner (note: not sweat shop, despite what one unfortunate online review might say) from Merseyside. And while I pass no judgment on her business acumen, it did get me thinking: what a miserable thing an online sweet shop must be.

Victoria’s company markets itself as the ‘UK’s most Instagrammable pick ’n’ mix’. Quite apart from why sweets that belong in your gob needs to be camera-friendly, it was the selection that left me wondering. Plenty of chicken feet and vegan meerkats, but not a rhubarb and custard in sight. It also probably goes without saying that gone are the days of £1 a quarter. I went into a newsagent the other day to find penny sweets at 5p each, and 10p for the ever-so-slightly larger ones. I almost choked on my fizzy cherry cola bottle. Though I shouldn’t complain, for charging by weight can be an even nastier surprise. Every few months there’s a cautionary tale of an unfortunate parent who ended up spending a week’s salary after letting the kids fill up their own pick ’n’ mix bags.

Today, old-school sugar troves are few and far between. Covid no doubt had something to do with it given old-fashioned human contact fell out of favour. Too handsy for the new age too I guess; after all, you can’t easily disinfect a gobstopper. The sweet shop has also become something of a dirty word after the ridiculous influx of shady American-style candy stores across London. But there’s no doubting there is still demand for proper old-school confectionery: a decade ago another former flight attendant saw an opportunity to get into the sweet business. Melanie Richings bought a 1976 Bedford ice cream van and began touring the schools and streets of Solihull, a saviour bedecked in pink and white selling retro favourites from the jar. Bravo. Though who would have thought the aeroplane would be supplanted in the glamour stakes by the flying saucer?

There are a few bright spots, including in the Yorkshire Dales which is lucky to have the oldest sweet shop in the world. Meanwhile, Mr Simms Sweet Shop has grown to some 80 stores which operate as franchises (including a handful in Hong Kong, lover as it is of all things British). A post-Covid makeover has seen them lose some of their charm, and with the brand having started up in 2004 they were admittedly only ever faux-Victorian. But a chocolate lime in a bricks and mortar store is not something to be sneered at in 2023.

Every generation has its own sweeties. Mine was an upbringing of Curly Wurlys, sherbet straws, candy cigarettes and Chupa Chups melody pops, though – always an old soul – I often hankered after the even more retro stuff. Most sweets seem designed to appeal to the child in us: fizzy worms, for example, given kids’ fascination with the squirming creatures. Incidentally, the number of sweets shaped as animals is striking: from sugar mice and sour spiders to the modern vogue for fizzy fish and Candy Kittens (not to mention Jelly Babies). I suppose it captures that same childhood fascination with the natural world.

In my school holidays I used to be shipped off by my parents to work in my aunt and uncle’s corner shop in Southend-on-Sea. Free labour for them and unlimited penny sweets for me, which suited both parties just fine. Aside from excitedly piling into the clapped-out Volvo to dash to the cash-and-carry when stocks of something or other ran out, my favourite duty was always taking payment for the sweets during the after-school rush – including seeing past the 11 gummy bears in the bag being routinely passed off for ten.

I long for a world of mint humbugs and aniseed balls. Pear drops and lemon sherbets. For magical emporiums of Willy Wonka-esque excess. Don’t we all? And while the general tide of retail shopping moving from the high street to online may be unstoppable, the sweet shop would be near the top of my list of bits to save. Checking out of Amazon with 500g of sweets in your online basket can’t quite compete with walking out of a real shop, paper bag in hand and a mouthful of barley sugars.