Confectioners and Penny Candies in the United States
Prior to the nineteenth century, sugar often figured as only a secondary ingredient in the products of confectioners (makers of sweets); wealthy consumers came to confectioners’ shops in search of exotic imported fruit, for which sugar was often used as a preservative. The nature of the confectioner’s enterprise and the high social status of the confectioner’s customers remained consistent until the late 1830s, when technological advances and the increased accessibility of sugar expanded the market. With such changes, confectioners began favoring not the preferences of the rich but the pleasures of the middle and working classes, no longer suiting only the tastes of adults but those of children too. Of course, fine confectioners remained, but the candy store became an enduring institution by catering to a very different set of customers and their needs.
The success of penny candy (inexpensive candy sold as individual pieces or in small quantities) reflected the transformation of the confectioner’s shop into the candy store. And the candy store helped accustom the middle class to the idea of consuming sweet confections. As cheap, brightly colored, fanciful pieces of hard-boiled sugar, penny candies enchanted children, who saw them as dazzling gemstones in the glass jars of the corner store. What is more, these sweets were the first material goods that nineteenth-century children spent their own money on, making them so important that candy store owners later in the century relied almost exclusively on the patronage of children to keep them in business.
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