I Want Some More...

Last night a friend asked me "what is the latest trends in candy?".  I was literally stumped for a minute, trying to flip through the long list of candy items in my mind and see if several of them actually constitute a "trend".
My response, at last, was kosher salt and spicy ingredients mixed with chocolate.
Not being completely sure that I was giving an authentic answer, I clicked on Google today and put in the words "candy trends".  The Google meter indicated that there are 58,500,000 results to those words.  Wow!  Let's try to narrow that search..
So I put in the words "U.S. candy trends"....only 43,000,000 plus results under that title.  Finally I put in "Oklahoma candy trends" and what came up was a number of candy stores in our state.
Not really having the time to read even 100 results on Google, I decided to rely on my own impressions of what is happening in the Mid-west.  Here goes:
Kosher salt on chocolate...whether it is in a bar, on a truffle or on a cream, kosher salt is showing up all over the chocolate industry.  So is spicey combinations of pepper and chocolate.
Artisan:  that seems to mean candy which is hand crafted and local.  Of course there are lots of small candy stores which make incredibly delicious candy and many people are willing to pay the cost of an individually produced, hand crafted chocolate.  And yet, most stores don't really carry that kind of candy....I suppose the demand is not yet strong enough to support the cost.
Reinterpreted Retro Candy is another category.  I can swear to that trend, since at Sweet Tooth we do get lots of folks who oooh and aaahhh over Clark bars, Bit O Honey, Neccos and Nik L Nip, to name a few.  This trend is fueled by parents wanting to introduce their children to the favorite candies from their childhood.
Recent concern about obesity in the U.S. has created a trend in itself.  Let's not throw out the baby with the bath water!!  Candy is a snack, not a replacement for a meal.  And judging by the annual increase in sales of good candy (and I'm not talking about the junk stuff you find at the convenience store!), people are finding the means to purchase a treat which has a more meaningful flavor and greater value.
And judging by those gummi vitamins I take every night, even a candy store owner works hard to combine nutrition and chocolate.  It's sort of a "S'more approach"....and I want some more.