"This summer the amount of tourists coming to our store is up about 100 percent," said Naresh Lakhwani, owner of the House of Candy store on Drottninggatan, Stockholm's main shopping street. "It started about a year ago and we have been working very hard to keep stocked, but we are facing shortages of some varieties, although we still have a large selection on offer."
Nathan, a worker at a restaurant in Malmö's old town, said that North American tourists were asking "almost every day" for directions to the nearest place where they could find Swedish candy, with more than 200 people making such requests.
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He said he gave them directions to the nearest Ica or Hemmakväll shop, and also directed them to shops where they could buy Kolsvart, an artisanal Malmö brand known for its upmarket take on Swedish fish.
Sega Gubben, one of the biggest sweet shops in central Gothenburg, said it was also seeing increased demand, although they attributed increased sales more to Danes taking advantage of the weak Swedish krona.
Lakhwani said that he had been struggling to maintain stocks of Bubs, which was founded by the Lindström family in Husqvarna, Småland in 1992, and was bought in 2023 by Orkla, a Norwegian foods conglomerate.
"We've noticed that it's really difficult, so we buy anything we can get our hands on," Martin Butfors Johansson, owner of Sega Gubben told The Local.
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Niclas Arnelin, head of the sweets division at Orkla, told The Local that the company was indeed struggling to meet demand for Bubs, which like the band Abba is named after its founders, in Bubs' case: Bernt, Ulrik, Birgitta and Stefan.
"We unfortunately do not have the capacity to meet the full demand for Bubs sweets right now and are prioritising our home market," he said. "After the Swedish candy trend, we have received many more requests from international wholesalers, which makes us unbelievably happy. We are also seeing other effects of the Swedish candy trend, for example more followers on social media."
He said the company hoped to be able to boost production by about 20 percent from the autumn, when a new drying cabinet is installed in its factory, and was also considering other investments to boost supply more dramatically.
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