If you’re looking to grow your sweet shop or your confectionery business by offering your customers a great selection of sweets, then look no further than Appleton Sweets.
Appleton Sweets has over 75 years’ experience selling wholesale sweets to discerning sweet shops. We are well known in the confectionery trade as a leading family-run business, wholesale sweet supplier.
We supply retailers and sweet shops with over 3,000 sweet products from our large, 35,000 square foot warehouse. We list new products all the time - just keep an eye on our homepage to see what’s new in stock.
One of the questions that you might be asking is what sweets should you stock in your shop? Tastes and fads are constantly changing - new sweets and confectionery products are coming to market all the time.
Keeping up with the latest trends can be a time consuming business. But luckily for you, we keep on top of trends, so you don’t have to. All you have to do is choose the sweets we wholesale for your sweet shop.
Some of the trends in the confectionery industry right now include:
1. Unique flavours
2. Premium ingredients
3. Dietary requirements
4. Retro products
5. Limited editions
Unique flavours and premium ingredients
According to market insights, demand for indulgent sweet treats and snacks grows daily. New product development launches featuring sweet products made from premium ingredients and using unique flavours over the last year, has been incredibly strong. In fact, the industry has seen double digit growth for premium confectionery launches around the world.
This leading trend for premium ingredients and unique flavours isn’t just reserved for sweets - it’s prevalent in the chocolate category too.
For new chocolate product launches, the most populous products have been indulgent and premium products. According to Innova Market Insights, indulgent and premium chocolates include novel flavours such as strawberries and cream, salted caramel, matcha tea and sea salt. As well as perennial favourites - hazelnut, almond, caramel and peanut.
While these novel flavours may be driving new growth in the chocolate industry, they haven't stopped household named brands such as Mars and Cadbury from retaining their pole position - being the most popular chocolate bars in the UK.
Top 10 Most Popular Chocolate Bars UK
So if you’re wondering what chocolate bars you should stock in your sweet shop that will appeal to your audience, let the current trends for new and exciting flavours guide you, but be sure to also include, along with any new products, a few perennial favourites too.
A list of the UK’s most popular chocolate bar choices for 2020 was compiled by the British Heart Foundation and in order of popularity (and all available through Appleton Sweets), include:
1. Snickers
3. Galaxy Bar
4. Bounty
5. Kit Kat
6. Twix
7. Twirl
8. Wispa
9. Mars Bar
10. Flake
So you know what chocolate bars you should be stocking, but what about sweet treats?
The fastest growing sweet category in 2017 was soft gums and chews, and while these remain incredibly popular, you might also want to take note of the growing anti-sugar trend.
Dietary requirements
While chocolate consumers don’t tend to concern themselves with popular health trends such as reducing sugar intake, that hasn’t stopped the confectionery makers themselves from allowing the trend to influence their new product development.
So much so, sweets that have no added sugar or ones that are sugar-free, are seeing their popularity rise exponentially.
At Appleton Sweets, we stock a range of dietary suitable products including gluten free sweets, dairy free sweets, vegan sweets and vegetarian sweets. But sugar free confectionery is the most popular dietary category which includes sugar free sweets and sugar free chocolate.
If you're worried that you’ll have to make allowances for your sugar free offerings, don’t be. The best thing about these new sugar free products is that they taste the same as the ‘full fat’ version. Your customers can still have their (sugar free) cake and eat it.
In fact, we stock a wide range of popular sugar free sweets from rhubarb and custard to sherbert lemons, pear drops. Even Chupa Chups do a sugar free wheel of lollipops.
But what if your customers want sugar free jelly sweets? Why not offer them sugar free cola bottles or sugar free jelly bears.
And what about sugar free chocolate? We have a line of Free’ist products that includes sugar free hazelnut chocolate (incorporating a popular flavour and the sugar free trend). We also stock sugar free marshmallows, even sugar free, sweet and salty popcorn.
Retro products
Who doesn’t want to take a trip down memory lane? Even if you don’t own a sweet shop that specialises in retro sweets, your customers are still going to go nuts over your range of retro sweets. They’ll love you for giving them retro products that evoke nostalgia and bring back fond memories of their childhood. Retro sweets are enormous sellers - always hugely popular.
Appleton Sweets has an incredible range of retro sweets for you to choose from - old fashioned sweets like sherbet lemons that older generations will love, as well as 70s and 80s sweets for the Gen X and Millennials among your customers - these include nerds candy, parma violets, even Black Jacks.
Limited editionThe final trend of limited edition appeals to a mass audience. This is one of Amazon’s favourite tactics: let your audience know that a product is limited, that there is only a short window of time to get their hands on it before they can’t get it any more. It’s like catnip to even the most seasoned shopper.
Few people can resist the pull of the limited edition. Right now, for example, we have exciting limited editions such as Twix salted caramel and Pez Marvel dispensers.
Finally
There you have it, let Appleton Sweets help you choose which sweets to stock in your sweet shop. By opting for this year’s trends - grabbing a handful of perennial popular choices, picking a few retro classics, stocking some dietary sweets, as well as a selection of limited editions, you’ll cover all bases. And your customers will thank you for it.