After 25 years as a TV producer for game shows like the Chase, Crystal Palace local Sue Allison has pivoted back to fulfilling a childhood dream: owning a sweets store and ice cream parlour.
Sweet Child of Mine caters to both children, and the little kid in all of us. With a handpicked selection of familiar (and often retro) favourites, she's hoping to wake up that inner child in adult customers of all ages - evoking a sense of wonder and childhood nostalgia.
Sweet Child of Mine caters to both children, and the little kid in all of us. With a handpicked selection of familiar (and often retro) favourites, she's hoping to wake up that inner child in adult customers of all ages - evoking a sense of wonder and childhood nostalgia.
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FunTranscript
00:00 My name's Sue Allison and this is Sweet Child of Mine.
00:03 What I've tried to do, so some pick and mix, not as much as if it was just a sweet shop,
00:08 but a really nice selection of 50 pick and mix choices that covers off most bases.
00:13 Then of course the ice cream, and so ice cream to take away in cones and also ice cream sundaes
00:19 that we make in an entirely edible cup with an entirely edible spoon.
00:26 The other thing that I'm trying to also do here is have some other kind of small gifts.
00:31 So nice gifts, chocolate, marshmallows, fudge, all made by artisan makers in the UK.
00:40 So small brands that you don't find in the supermarkets.
00:43 I suppose it's like always been in the back of my mind.
00:47 I was one of those kids who always wanted to play shop and set up in the living room
00:51 and I used to paint jam jars as a kid and try and sell them to people in our driveway.
00:57 And I've sort of always enjoyed it, but never really considered it as a practical option
01:03 until probably about a year ago when I started to think,
01:07 "Okay, the TV industry is not what it was. I need to start thinking about doing something different."
01:14 I started off obviously with my favourites, that's like number one,
01:18 and then had to broaden outside of that as well.
01:21 So it was a couple of ways really, partly looking at what are Britain's top 50 pick and mix sweets,
01:28 which was interesting and more surprising than you'd think actually.
01:32 And also quite a lot of research as well amongst people of all different ages,
01:36 quite a lot of fun people thinking what their favourites were and remembering those ones.
01:41 And then going to have a look and seeing if they did actually still exist.
01:45 And some things like white mice are exactly as I remember them
01:49 as a seven-year-old with my 10p pocket money going to the corner shop.
01:53 So I've tried to go for a mix of real old-fashioned favourites like the boiled sweets,
01:58 things like rhubarb and custard and pear drops and sherbet lemons and things like that.
02:02 The more kind of retro things from the 70s like
02:05 foam shrimps and white mice, flying saucers.
02:08 And then sort of much more up-to-date sweets, you know, sort of something a bit different.
02:13 Like there are some amazing vegan ranges now, really, really delicious sweets
02:19 that are just as good as if they had the gelatin in.
02:23 You know, it doesn't matter what age someone is when they come in
02:25 and they have a look at the sweets on the shelves.
02:28 There'll always be something that triggers a memory.
02:30 And so I've heard stories about shop owners, about particular sweets.
02:34 People remember like in precise detail how much they spent, how much pocket money they had.
02:40 And then that triggers all sorts of other memories as well about their childhood.
02:44 It's lovely, actually. It's really, really nice.
02:46 And inevitably, the one thing that was their favourite,
02:49 we searched the shelves for to see if I've got.
02:53 And I tend to have most things, but yeah, occasionally I do get caught out
02:57 by something that I've literally never heard of from the 1950s or something.
03:01 And then I do my best to try and track it down if I can.
03:04 The thing about ice cream is it makes you instantly feel like you're on holiday.
03:08 And so when I was thinking about which supplier to use, it was OK.
03:11 Let me think, where have I been in the UK?
03:13 And just an ice cream was really topped off the afternoon.
03:16 And I had a brilliant holiday with some friends of ours in Pembrokeshire.
03:21 And we had Marshfield Farm ice cream there and tried out all the different,
03:26 more unusual flavours that they do.
03:28 And so really, there wasn't, you know, there was no competition.
03:32 That was the one that I really wanted to go for because they're a British company.
03:38 They make ice cream from their own herd down in Wiltshire.
03:41 Pretty much all the flavours are really, really good, which is quite rare.
03:46 And they all taste really natural.
03:48 They're, you know, it's really, really good quality, old fashioned British ice cream.
03:55 And yeah, sort of tend to have very satisfied customers.