How a viral TikTok video caused a year-long global shortage of Swedish sweets

Global shortage of Swedish-made sweets, all thanks to a viral TikTok video? Stranger things have happened.

But that’s exactly what happened earlier this year, when TikTok influencer Marygrace Graves showed her followers the candy she had purchased on a weekly visit to BonBon, a Swedish candy store in New York.

“This is a strawberry squid. This is the first time I’ve had them, they’re delicious,” Graves told her followers in the January video, as if telling them a secret.

Well, the secret was out, and other TikTok users began making their own Swedish candy videos, generating millions of posts, a viral internet phenomenon, and an ongoing global shortage of the country’s prized sweets.

Graves’ viral haul from the original video included some candies that were foamy and others that made his teeth feel like they were going to break, he said. Some were oddly shaped, including a gummy rat held by its tail; and many had a unique flavor, like a sour raspberry-lemon gummy that she approved of, and a grapefruit candy that she said made her nauseous.

All of them were imported from Sweden, a country known for manufacturing high-quality sweets.

What makes Swedish candy stand out is that it leans toward unusual shapes and flavors, and away from the additives typically found in North American candy, according to Michelina Jassal, owner of Swedish candy shop Karameller in Vancouver.

“No GMO, no corn syrup, usually (fewer) ingredients than conventional sweets you find in the supermarket,” Jassal said of the Scandinavian sweets. “You don’t get that sick stomach feeling that you sometimes get with conventional sweets.”

The shortage sent Canadian importers scrambling to find supply.

Jessica Borchiver, who runs the Swedish online candy store Sukker Baby from her home in Toronto, said an increasingly impatient (and increasingly American) clientele urged her to restock one particularly high-demand brand: Bubs Godis.

What until then had been a stable business for Borchiver exploded overnight. But the race against Bubs “took everything to the limit,” he said. “Everyone who was anyone wanted to get their hands on it.”

Swedish candy makers prioritize Nordic customers

Bubs Godis is one of the largest candy manufacturing companies in Sweden. As demand skyrocketed due to its sudden virality, it was forced to stop recruiting new international clients, a policy in place since late December. The company was already running out of stock in the summer months, when Sweden began its annual six-week factory holiday.

Any company would be happy to see a sudden increase in international interest. But the creators of Bubs decided to take care of their own people first.

“We have had long relationships with our customers in Sweden and the rest of the Nordic countries,” said Niclas Arnelin, director of international expansion at Orkla, the Swedish food and snacks corporation that owns Bubs. “And we need to prioritize them currently.”

They may also be your best customers: Swedes have a notorious sweet tooth and eat up to 16 kilograms of sweets each year, according to a spokesperson for Business Swedish, a government and business organization that promotes Swedish exports.

The country has a long tradition called Saturday sweetsor “Saturday sweets”, where families are known to fill up on sweets. The custom was born from a study conducted in the 1950s by medical researchers who found that the country’s dental health would improve if they limited candy consumption to one day per week.

Stockholm resident Linda Rose remembers when the custom became popular. With his own children, he performed a similar ritual on Fridays.

But if there is currently a global shortage afflicting the sweet tooth community, the Swedes have been spared the pain.

“There is no shortage here,” he said. “None, not at all.”