For the past few years, Bakehouse—the big, boxy, powder-pink building that sits on the south side of Excelsior Boulevard in St. Louis Park—has functioned as a sister space to Anne Andrus’s bakery Honey and Rye, serving as a production kitchen, a space for parties and pop-ups, and a hub for community-led baking and cooking classes. None of that’s changing, so don’t fret! But the little retail space inside Bakehouse, which Andrus and her team previously dedicated to specialty items, seasonal pies, and whimsical pastry experimentations du jour (I’ll never forget you, S’mores buns) has undergone a complete makeover: It’s now a Swedish candy shop, sweet and sugar-crusted and bright as a rainbow any way you turn.
Smorgasbord is a Swedish word, right? Here we’ll apply it to candy instead of cold cuts. Over the past year and a half, Andrus has immersed herself in the wildly trendy world of Swedish candy, scheming on how to transform Bakehouse’s unique retail footprint into the ideal sweet shop. The candies (like most things these days) came to her first via her Instagram feed. “I was like, What do we do with such an itty-bitty footprint?” Andrus says. “But I really wanted to keep it as a space where customers can come in and have an experience. I think of it like the after-party to the bakery—now we’re getting to the real stuff, the sugar high.”
Inspired, Andrus jetted off to New York City and toured the Swedish candy shops of Manhattan (Bon Bon, Lil Sweet Treat, Candy King, etc.). Now, with The Candy Shop ready to fly, she works with a Swedish wholesaler named Johan, who offers around 800 different varieties. Picking through them was a feat, Andrus says, so she had her 11-year-old help her out, and did plenty of sampling with staff and family members…