The latest online eating fad where social media users tuck into large dill pickles wrapped in tangy jelly strips and dipped in spicy sauce has sent sales at a Derby sweet store booming.
Candy Craft, which is based in the Derbion Shopping Centre, says young people are beating a path to its door to pick up the ingredients for the latest version of the TikTok Pickle Challenge, which is currently sweeping social media.
The trend is the latest in a succession of weird and wonderful eating challenges on TikTok and involves wrapping a large dill pickle and red-hot chilli tortilla chips inside a tangy fruit Roll-Up, dipping it into a sweet chilli sauce and tajin seasoning and taking a bite.
Nobody really knows where the trend came from, but that hasn’t stopped a steady stream of teenagers and young people turning up at Candy Craft, which is based opposite Iceland, buying the £2 large American dill pickle and all of the extras.
Last weekend shop owner Tom Duffy and his staff even put together around 90 specially created packs containing customers needed for the challenge and promptly sold around 60 of them in just two days.
Candy Craft, which recently relocated from its former stall in the Eagle Market, stocks hundreds of different sweets, including a huge range of traditional British favourites, but is a popular destination for people who love American candies, such as Jolly Ranchers, and often stocks brands that pop up in favourite US sitcoms or on social media.
When it comes to the pickle challenge, the go-to dill pickle is sold by US firm Van Holten’s, which supplies them in a range of flavours contained within a distinctive pouch and then exports them to the UK.
Tom said: “We stock a huge range of American candies and general food items and we’ve seen many trends come and go over the years, but last weekend it was the turn of the pickle eating challenge to bring customers in.
“I haven’t done it myself but there’s a lot of excitement and the packs did extremely well. We’ve included everything customers need, including pots of the dipping sauce at the tajin seasoning, and we’re able to tell them what to do – the rest is up to them!
“It’s all about being able to handle the different tastes at once and it’s generally harmless. There’s also a trend on TikTok that some people are called WaterTok, which involves flavouring water with powders to create what we in Britain would recognise as fruit squash.
“We sell powdered flavourings from America and we’ve seen a big increase in people wanting to buy those too.”
Tom has run Candy Craft for 10 years after he ploughed his savings into setting up his stall shortly after leaving university. Its current shop is significantly larger than its previous market stall and it sells hundreds of different varieties of loose sweets, including vegan gluten-free and sugar-free varieties, as well as groceries.
He added: “Despite the cost-of-living crisis, sweet sales are holding up pretty well and I think that’s because people are still looking for a treat that’s fun, accessible and affordable.
“We have people coming to us from places like Birmingham and even further away because they can’t get the American sweets and cereals or they’re more expensive elsewhere.
“Otherwise, we have a really loyal customers who like the old-fashioned loose sweets in jars, such as the herbal tablets and pear drops. Our new shop has loads of space for them and I’m eventually aiming to stock 640 different jars with every type of sweet you can think of.”
