At a time when US consumer confidence has slumped to an all-time low and the dollar no longer stretches as far, one unlikely sector is thriving across New York City: candy stores. Mitchell Cohen, third-generation owner of Economy Candy on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, has seen it before. His grandfather opened the shop in 1937, towards the end of the Great Depression, when people could not afford to repair hats and shoes but still bought sweet treats from a cart out front. “The dollar isn’t going as far these days,” Cohen says. “Inflation, uncertainty, all that, but there’s always candy.”
Eighty-nine years later, Economy Candy is still going strong. And it is not alone. A new wave of confectionery shops is opening across the city and its outskirts, even as official data shows US retail sales growing 4.9% in April from a year earlier and consumer sentiment hitting a historic low in May. Kate Bolger, a former movie producer, is due to open The Village Confectionery next month in Sleepy Hollow, the Hudson Valley town 28 miles north of New York City best known as the setting of a 19th-century horror story. “Everyone can partake,” Bolger says of candy’s low price point, echoing Cohen’s view that while people may put off big purchases, they can still treat themselves to a piece of sweets.
“Candy stores are expanding across New York City as US consumer confidence hits an all-time low.”
The phenomenon mirrors the so-called “lipstick effect” economic theory from the early 2000s, in which consumers unable to afford expensive luxuries turn to small indulgences. In Manhattan and Brooklyn, upmarket candy store BonBon now has five shops, plus another in the Hamptons that opened last summer. Founded in 2018 by three Swedish expats, the company imports its range from Sweden, where strict rules on natural ingredients have driven a global social-media boom for Swedish confectionery. Co-founder Leo Schaltz says the key to survival is avoiding main avenues. “You wouldn’t want to be on Broadway,” he explains, adding that side streets offer lower rents and smaller units. “You don’t want to overpay for rent, and it’s easier to make a space feel cozy when it’s small.”