Bulk Salted Licorice (Bulk)

Most buyers in North America underrate salted licorice until it’s actually on their shelf. Then somebody asks for it by name, and then they ask again. A lot of that is Scandinavian families or people with a European background, but it spreads out to curious eaters, specialty grocery shoppers and anyone who tried salmiak on a trip once and never forgot it. That mix of a small loyal crowd and plain curiosity is why we like it in an import program. Our bulk salted licorice section has all 32 SKUs.

Gustaf and Bubs Godis are the ones people from Northern Europe grew up with. So are Hockey and Kolafabrikens. Malaco and Bilar fill in beside them, then Cowboy and Mangini. None of this is novelty stuff. It’s everyday candy in Sweden and Denmark. Finland and Holland have it too. Expats hunt for it through specialty shops. Carry it and your customers find something the regular grocery store simply doesn’t have, which is the sort of thing people mention to a friend.

The range is wider than you’d guess. At one end you get the hard-core salmiak. It’s the properly salty ammonium chloride kind that defines the old Scandinavian style. Hockey Salty Licorice Powder comes in 12g packs, plain or with pepper. Cowboy Salty Licorice Powder is 9g. There’s also the Nordic Salty Licorice Mix and the Chewy Salty Licorice Tablets, which are Salmiak Tabs from Denmark. Import food fans buy these over and over. At the other end are the hybrids. Bilar Salty Licorice Marshmallows are an easy first try, since the salmiak flavor sits inside a marshmallow. Kolafabrikens Lemon Salt Licorice Caramel and Raspberry Salt Licorice Caramel come from Sweden and put fruit over the salty licorice in a soft caramel. Then Narr Chocolate Salty Licorice and Caramel Balls pack a lot into one bite. Mangini’s Gessetti Salmiak Filled Licorice is the Italian take, and it’s odd enough that people talk about it at the shelf.

Denmark gets a lot of the space. Pirate Coins Salty Licorice (that’s Piratos) and Haribo Salty Black Licorice Herring Salt Sild are both here. Toms Pinguine Salty Licorice Pastilles and Dunderklubba Salty Licorice Center Lollipops are too, and Danes take their salmiak very seriously. From Finland there’s the Malaco Jungle Roar Salty Licorice and the Fazer Salty Licorice Kitten. Between them you get nearly the whole Northern European salmiak map from one supplier.

Case weights go from 0.4 lb for the smallest snack packs to 9.41 lb for the larger bulk fill. A small import deli trying salted licorice for the first time might take a single little case and see how people react, while a candy shop with a regular salmiak crowd could order the big ones to keep a bin full through Advent or Midsummer. Both approaches work since there’s no minimum order. Approved wholesale accounts get account pricing, which helps once you’re building out a bigger assortment.

If you run an import deli or a Scandinavian shop, you already know this one. People who buy salted licorice make a point of coming back for it, and they tell friends where they found it. They’ll also buy a lot at once when they trust the source. A well-stocked section with salmiak powder packs and hybrids like the Kolafabrikens caramels tells that customer you know what you’re doing.

Candy boutiques have a design angle here. Black and dark brown pieces look great in a glass bin or a white jar. The colors here are black and brown, pink and red. There’s gold as well as assorted, so there’s room to play. Bilar’s marshmallows and the Kolafabrikens caramels are the lighter pieces, and they let a nervous shopper see that not everything on the shelf is brutally salty. We’d line it up mild to strong, hybrids first and the old-school salmiak at the far end, so a first-timer can walk the whole way.

A few gift-basket makers and subscription box companies have started tucking a bit of salted licorice into Scandinavian or European boxes as a discovery piece. The Hockey powder packs suit that, since each pack is 12g and they come in a 15-pack, which makes them easy to share and small enough to fit anywhere. Dunderklubba lollipops give a gift something fun too.

There are sugar-free items in the collection. Bagged and bulk forms are both here, so you can fill an open bin and also stock ready-packed units in the same order. We ship to US addresses. Scandinavian communities in the Midwest and the Pacific Northwest are big, and they look for this candy.

Thirty-two SKUs is enough for a real salted licorice section, not just a token pair of items on a shelf. With five countries and eight brands you can tell a coherent Northern European story and still give shoppers enough variety to keep coming back.

Frequently Asked Questions