Swedish candy darling BonBon is entering its big-box era

BonBon, a New York City-based Swedish candy brand, is about to hit Target’s shelves. It’s the exact kind of mass retail move that usually flattens a cult brand’s specificity into something generic and uninteresting. But at BonBon, the founding creative team is betting on the opposite: that the brand’s design discipline, run almost entirely through one artist’s hand, is what allows the company to scale without diluting the brand’s authentic tether to Swedish candy culture. [Photo: BonBon] BonBon was founded in 2017 by three Swedish transplants—Robert Persson, Selim Adira and Leo Schaltz—who had moved to New York City around the same time. The friends often lamented how much they missed the quality, texture, and flavor of candy back home. As hospitality veterans, they thought they could bring Swedish candy to New York. In 2018, the founders opened a jewel box shop on the Lower East Side, followed in fall 2020 by BonBon’s first original candy (Sour Strawberry Fish) and a second shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (which never stopped operating during the pandemic, leading to burgeoning third-party delivery for the brand). Target represents its first entry into big-box retail; this will be…