Finnish and Swedish candy brands face off in Helsinki

A playful Finnish Swedish candy rivalry may be taking shape in Helsinki, Yle reports, as Swedish brands open shops in the city and a Finnish licorice maker launches a flagship store nearby.

More than 100 people queued outside Swedish candy brand Bubs’ pop up shop in central Helsinki on Saturday, 29 August. Kouvolan Lakritsi will open its flagship store on Keskuskatu this week, close to the Bubs shop.

A pop up shop selling Swedish marshmallow themed brand Coletta is also due to open on Mikonkatu for just over a week. A large Lindt store selling Swiss chocolate opened on Aleksanterinkatu at the end of last year.

Santeri Nisula, chief executive of Kouvolan Lakritsi, said in a statement that he believed in the strength of physical shops. The store had been planned since spring, he said.

“A digitalising world needs more encounters and tangible experiences alongside it,” Nisula said.

Johanna Mäkelä, a food culture professor at the University of Helsinki, said it was interesting that candy was now being treated as a product worthy of its own shop, particularly one selling only a single brand.

She said the use of the pop up concept showed that brands wanted to test what worked and whether there was demand for their products. Limited availability could also boost sales, while branded interiors offered a setting for creating social media content.

In Bubs’ case, viral videos helped drive the brand’s success. Mäkelä said customers were already familiar with such products when they arrived in Finland because they had encountered them on social media.

Swedish candy is already an established concept, particularly in the United States and Asia. Patrick Axzell, chief executive of Orkla Snacks Sweden, which owns Bubs, told Yle last year that candy tourism had become a phenomenon, with people travelling to Stockholm from the United States, Japan and South Korea specifically to buy Swedish candy.

Mäkelä said Finnish brands could compete through licorice, salty licorice and Fazer chocolate. She noted that Kouvolan Lakritsi’s name itself honoured a Finnish locality and highlighted the product’s origins.

She said candy was a well established part of Finnish culture, from traditional sweets and candy shops to candy days and Saturday bags. At the same time, product development in the category remained active, with constant demand for new products.