Littleover resident Tom Duffy’s sweet shop recently moved to the shopping centre after 10 years at the Eagle Market
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A new Derbion sweet shop is doing a roaring trade in selling pickle kits to be used in the latest TikTok eating challenge craze. Candy Craft, which opened at Derby's biggest shopping centre earlier this month, sold around 60 of the kits last weekend and dozens more to teenagers who popped in this midweek.
The trend is the latest in a succession of weird and wonderful eating challenges to hit the social media site. It 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 young people turning up at Candy Craft to buy the £2 large American dill pickle and all of the extras.
READ MORE: Look inside Candy Craft's new sweet shop at Derbion
Specialising in American confectionery, Littleover resident Tom Duffy's business traded from the Eagle Market for almost a decade. It left the indoor market on Saturday, March 18, before opening opposite Iceland on the ground floor at Derbion on Tuesday, April 4.
The 30-year-old owner has stocked his first-ever standalone shop full of hundreds of different varieties of loose sweets, as well as chocolate, cake and biscuits.
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. 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.”
A new stall serving Taiwanese bubble tea officially opens at Derbion today, Saturday, April 29. Bubble CiTea, located outside Sainsbury's on the ground floor of the Derby shopping centre, will be giving away drinks to the first 100 customers to attend its grand opening event, which starts at midday. Tote bags will also be given away to the 50th/100th/150th customers to buy a drink after 12pm, with a lucky dip for other prizes.
A new Asian restaurant will open at Derbion's revamped food court later this spring. Chi Street Food is joining the Level 2 eating area, which has been renamed the "food terrace" following a big £2 million makeover.
The Oriental restaurant will take up a 1,706 sq ft space at the city shopping centre, which will welcome its first customers over the coming weeks. The grab-and-go style restaurant's menu includes Bao buns, Katsu curry, 12-hour slow-cooked beef short rib, and Korean fried chicken. Several vegan and vegetarian dishes will also be available to try.
Chi will become the fourth new eatery to open at the food terrace since major refurbishment work began last summer. Mexican street food restaurant Tortilla opened in February, joining burger restaurant Burger & Sauce, which welcomed its first customers in December 2022, and American fried chicken chain Popeyes, which opened in October 2022.
Outdoor sportswear retailer Trespass is set to close its store at Derbion. Signs reading 'closing down everything must go' have gone up in the window of the shop, which is located opposite Vodafone on the ground floor of the shopping centre.
Love Aroma, a candle, aroma and home fragrance retailer, is shutting its store on Level 1, with a 'closing down sale' now on. Stationery chain Paperchase closed its Level 2 store on Saturday, March 25 following an "everything must go" closing-down sale.
The card retailer fell into administration at the end of January, before supermarket giant Tesco quickly swooped in to buy the chain’s brand and intellectual property. But the high street retailer's 106 stores were not included in the deal.
The highly anticipated Frasers department store, which features a beauty hall and areas dedicated to stocking men's, women's and children's fashion, opened in early December 2022. Sportswear giant Sports Direct is based on Level 2 of the 127,000 sq ft retail unit, with video gaming retailer GAME taking up some floorspace on Level 3.
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