Saturday Candy Co. — 73 Main Street, Stony Brook, NY 11790

ByPeter
Candy wall in village storefront

If a Swedish child asks for a gummy bear on a Tuesday, the customary answer has held for nearly seven decades: not until Saturday. That rule is the name, the business model and the whole point of Saturday Candy Co., a Swedish pick-and-mix shop that opened at 73 Main Street in Stony Brook Village in October 2025, added a Sayville storefront this spring, and announced a third shop in Westhampton Beach for the end of June 2026.

Three shops in about eight months is brisk growth for an independent candy business, and the story behind it runs through a founder’s suitcase order, a TikTok-fueled online following, and a Swedish health campaign with a history that deserves honest treatment.

Monday Through Friday: Where the Saturday Rule Came From

Lördagsgodis means “Saturday sweets” in Swedish. Families fill paper bags from supermarket candy walls, called the godisvägg, and pay by weight, a habit The Local describes as a beloved weekend activity. The same article notes that loose pick-and-mix candy was not allowed in Sweden until 1985. Local coverage of Saturday Candy Co. dates the custom to 1959, when Swedish families began limiting candy to one day a week under a national health initiative.

Hands filling a paper bag with gummy candy

The research underneath that advice is a harder story. It grew out of the Vipeholm experiments, a series of dental studies at a hospital near Lund for people with severe intellectual disabilities. According to Elin Bommenel’s 2006 doctoral thesis at Lund University, the program began in 1945, the sugar phase started in 1947, and the work closed in 1955, with 660 patients and 140 staff in the first phase. Chewy sweets such as toffee, eaten between meals, produced the heaviest decay. The findings fed a 1957 national campaign on sweets and dental health.

The ethics have been questioned for decades. The patients had no meaningful say in what they were fed, and medical ethicist Art Caplan said in a 2019 report carried by KTVZ that people with disabilities were then “seen as not fully human.” The dentist Bo Krasse later defended the study in a paper, arguing that it predated the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki. Both views belong in any account of where Saturday candy came from. The shop’s own coverage frames the custom as a health initiative and a family tradition, while the Lund thesis and ethicists describe the research beneath it.

Candy buying climbed once loose candy arrived. Wikipedia’s overview of the tradition reports that per-capita consumption in Sweden rose from 10 to 15 kilograms a year beginning in the 1980s.

One Trip, One Phone Call, Hundreds of Pounds of Candy

Julia Brandt moved from Sweden to the United States in 2018, and press coverage says she founded Saturday Candy Co. in July 2024, shortly after her first child was born. Her own account, published by Canvas Rebel, is more specific. On a trip to Sweden with her three-month-old son, a candy-store employee told her that American demand was rising and straining supply there. She researched manufacturers, phoned suppliers daily, talked it over with her husband, and, by her telling, registered the business the next day and ordered hundreds of pounds of candy shipped to JFK. She wanted a business that gave her “one foot in Sweden” and one in the United States.

The first storefront was a Shopify site. Mixes sold by the pound, including sweet, sour and gelatin-free bags and themed blends with names like “animal party” and “pink mix,” with a goal of shipping every order within 24 hours. Brandt credits TikTok and Instagram hashtags for finding buyers, and she says a single viral video on TikTok Shop can bring in hundreds of orders in a day. Those figures are her description of the business; the coverage reviewed for this post gives no sales numbers.

Before the counter there was a cart. A release published by TBR News Media says she sold from a Swedish candy cart at catered events in Sag Harbor and the Hamptons, and that her husband, Bo Brandt, helped turn the online shop into a real storefront.

Three Shops in About Eight Months

The Stony Brook shop sits at 73 Main Street in Stony Brook Village, next to Schnitzels. Greater Long Island reported on October 11, 2025 that it was entering its second week, and TBR News Media’s release gives a soft opening of October 4. Brandt, who grew up with a bowl of candy in the family pantry, described the culture she was importing this way: “Candy culture in Sweden is huge.”

Gummies and chocolate bars on a wooden table

Sayville came next. Greater Long Island reported on April 2, 2026 that the second shop, at 12 Gillette Avenue, was opening that week; the article and its page description disagree on the exact day. Bo Brandt is a Sayville native, and the couple settled on the storefront in February. Julia Brandt told the paper that “So many families were coming to Stony Brook from Sayville,” and described the new room as similar to the original, just a little smaller.

The third announcement reached the Hamptons. On June 1, 2026, Greater Long Island reported that a shop at 1 Moniebogue Lane in Westhampton Beach would open in late June, the brand’s first Hamptons location. Brandt, who lived in the Hamptons for a couple of years after arriving from Sweden, said of the choice, “it just felt right to open a location here.” Her husband’s family business has worked in the area for roughly four decades.

ShopAddressStatus in the reporting reviewed
Stony Brook73 Main Street, Stony BrookOpened early October 2025
Sayville12 Gillette Avenue, SayvilleOpening reported early April 2026
Westhampton Beach1 Moniebogue Lane, Westhampton BeachAnnounced June 1, 2026 for late June; opening not confirmed in sources reviewed

What Fills the Wall

The centerpiece is a pick-and-mix wall of sweet and sour gummies in assorted shapes and textures. Brandt says most of the candy uses natural flavoring and coloring, and her company profile names turmeric, safflower and spirulina as colorants, adding that no flavor uses Red 40. The shop also stocks Bubs, a vegan and gluten-free brand, along with Swedish chocolate bars, and sells tote bags, crewnecks and hats under its own label.

Beyond the counter, the company’s website lists party services: birthday candy bars, party favors, event pop-ups and personalized orders. Prices do not appear in any coverage reviewed, so none are given here. Anyone shopping around an allergy should confirm ingredients with the shop directly, since claims like “gluten-free” apply to specific products and brands, not the whole wall.

Why Swedish Candy, and Why This Month

Saturday Candy Co. is not the only Swedish pick-and-mix concept to reach the New York area. Time Out reported that CandyKing, a Swedish chain founded in 1984, opened its first U.S. store at 306 Bleecker Street in the West Village on December 6, 2025, built around a wall roughly 27 feet wide and billed as the start of a larger American rollout. Back in 2017, SAVEUR called Sockerbit, a minimalist Scandinavian candy shop in New York City, one of the coolest-looking candy shops its editors had seen. Read together, the Suffolk shops look like one thread in a wider appetite for the format. That reading is interpretation, not something any of the sources states.

The calendar adds two hooks. Sweetest Day, observed on the third Saturday of October, falls on October 17 this year. Wikipedia traces it to Cleveland in 1921, where a committee of confectioners gave away more than 20,000 boxes of candy, and notes it is observed in parts of the Northeast, including New York. And Halloween lands on Saturday, October 31, 2026, so the biggest candy night of the year coincides with the one day Swedish tradition says candy is allowed. Saturday Candy Co. has not announced plans for either date in the coverage reviewed, though Brandt said the Westhampton shop would run events through the year.

Long Island has its own sweet history for context. This blog has covered the unloved history of candy corn, the potato candy that farm country invented during sugar rationing, and what happened when tanghulu went viral on TikTok.

Before You Go

Stony Brook: 73 Main Street, Stony Brook, NY 11790. Phone 631-525-3492, per the company website.

Candy shop on a village main street in autumn

Sayville: 12 Gillette Avenue, Sayville, NY 11782. Phone 631-460-0055.

Westhampton Beach: 1 Moniebogue Lane, Westhampton Beach, NY. The website lists the Stony Brook number for this shop.

Online and social: saturdaycandycony.com (the saturdaycandyco.org address redirects there), plus Instagram and TikTok, both under the handle @saturdaycandyco.

What are the hours? Greater Long Island reported 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily for both Stony Brook and Sayville. The company website lists no hours, so call ahead.

Is the shop only open on Saturdays? No. The name refers to the Swedish tradition, and coverage describes seven-day operation.

What does lördagsgodis mean? “Saturday sweets” or “Saturday candy,” the Swedish custom of eating candy once a week.

Is the Westhampton Beach shop open? It was announced for late June 2026. The sources reviewed do not confirm the opening, so check the shop’s channels first.

When is Sweetest Day in 2026? Saturday, October 17.

Details here reflect reporting through October 9, 2026, and hours, addresses and products can change.

Sources

Peter Kalafatis

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