happenings;

summer slowdown who?? against all odds (by which I mean - Brooklyn’s descent into real feel 110* for a week, wildfire smoke the next, then back-to-back Saturday storms of either 50mph winds or major flash flooding)….despite it all, we stayed BUSY!

first and foremost: 100 days of Candor!! The auspicious day landed on Thursday July 9th so we celebrated through a long weekend.

Sarah Mar (of smar.art fame) installed her miniprint machine featuring ten limited Brooklyn themed prints, three of which were Candor Fort Greene exclusives. It’ll be here through the end of summer, so stop by!

The best part was a weekend-long “One Pound Challenge” — if you could fill your candy bag to 1.00 lb exactly, it was free 🫢 We had five winners (many of whom are featured below) and enough fun that we’re planning to make it a permanent. What’s more New York than “home of the famous ____”?

With the dog days of summer in full effect, we were thrilled the Alec’s Ice Cream Summer Roadshow rolled through Candor in partnership with and . Alec’s brought the matcha ice cream, Jamagannsett brought the strawberry sauce, Candor brought the strawberry chocolate pretzel topping, and Coolstuff brought the chicest Brooklyn crowd. The turnout was massive and it was such a blast connecting with some new friends in the world of NYC food + CPG who came to support!

We deeply enjoyed watching ⚽️ World Cup unfold as neighbors gathered across the street at Black Forest — for the final, we couldn’t help but leave our door open to listen to the roar of the crowd (and to chuckle at the way Fancy Free’s cable was about 30 seconds delayed, so we had a bit of a wave effect of cheering!)

New on shelves this month: Croots snacking croutons, Shinzo matcha lattes, Little Syl all natural fruit roll ups, and Clemente Bar marinated olives (from the famous Eleven Madison Park bar collaboration with artist Francisco Clemente). We even grabbed the special edition packaged sweets from our neighbors at BonBon - the ones that haven’t hit bodega shelves — and surely you didn’t miss our video about the Japanese gummy candy search?

Plus some big news: CANDOR chocolate covered nuts are finally here. It’s important we keep these out of the standard bulk bins given the anaphalactic levels nut allergies often rise to, but naturally, this has been one of the top requests we’ve heard since we opened. When we went to market for them, were frustrated by the lack of high-quality, elegantly packaged, reasonably priced options - everything was wrapped in a plan cellophane bag, or was in a large giftable box vs sized to take to the theater.

In the end we looked to our top-tier Long Island supplier (who already brings our fan favorite bulk bin chocolate) and individually packaged them ourselves in tins from our red/white Candor tin supplier. A classic “screw it, if we want it done right we’ll have to do it ourselves” 😉

and now, our July foodbank donation!

About Food Bank For New York City — Food Bank For NYC has been feeding New Yorkers since 1983, when Kathy Goldman co-founded what was then called Food For Survival — the city’s very first food bank. Over four decades, it has grown into the largest hunger relief organization in New York, working with nearly 800 community partners across all five boroughs to serve 1.4 million New Yorkers. Today, Food Bank for NYC runs food distributions, a Community Kitchen in West Harlem serving 100,000 meals a month, SNAP enrollment support, and nutrition education programs — all coordinated out of a 90,000-square-foot warehouse in Hunts Point, the Bronx.

About CANDY CAN DO GOOD — In our founding year 2026, Candor has committed to donating $1 to local foodbanks for every Instagram follow, Substack subscription, and Google review we get - directly transforming the community support we receive into support for our neighbors facing food insecurity. Our plan for 2027 and beyond is to begin donating a percentage of total sales to our foodbank partners, deepening that commitment as the business grows.

CANDY CAN DO GOOD progress meter

As of July 31, our community had grown to 3,800 Instagram followers, 110 Substack subscribers, and 70 Google reviews - bringing Candor’s total 2026 foodbank donation commitment to $3,980.

Our first four donations totaled $2,700 across 4 organizations: Clinton Hill Fort Greene Mutual Aid, New York Cares, City Harvest, and Community Help in Park Slope. Add this $1,000 to Food Bank for NYC and Candor has donated a total of $3,700 so far.

Candor is committed to fulfilling our donation pledge in full. As a brand new business, we’re being thoughtful stewards of our longevity - and as such, donations may lag slightly behind the running count. We’ll report on donations vs commitment - and any gap - honestly and with full transparency until we’ve seen our 2026 commitment through.

up next in August —

we’re working with a VERY exciting partner to expand the Candor brand world

headed to the Hamptons for Candor’s first hosted-brand activation!!

10+ wedding and in the middle of it all, Resortpass called us……

happenings;

THE CITY’S ALIVE, KNICKS IN FIVE!!! The boys went on to win the championship, Spike Lee shouted out our celebration post directly, and we’re still floating off the high of it all.

Operationally we celebrated a huge milestone; candorcandy.delivery is live!!! This was such a long time in the making…you’d think Square/UberEats would make it easier to take all of our collective money, but man oh man, was truly like pulling teeth. Shoutout to our pals at @solidwiggles for the constant reassurance that we would get here one day, if only we could maintain a steadfast stubbornness against Square’s…quirks.

Well momma, we made it! Candor now offers online orders and local delivery for all our trays, bentos, tins, as well as bulk candy (1lb+ for couch rotting days, 5lbs+ for ~party days~). We keep all supplies on hand in the shop and can turn any order around in as little as an hour, even the trays - no need to plan massively ahead!

If you’re looking for a shindig a bit further out and wanting to make it memorable, consider our goody bag orders and add on a custom-packaging-interest deposit. We can find iridescent plastic cubes to match your Y2K birthday theme! We can get stickers printed of your baby or your spouse’s silliest faces and show up with them pre-applied!

In-store, the team put a TON of work into our first Pride. A multi-day brainstorm resulted in the renaming of an entire bay of the pick&mix wall. We hung decorations, passed out free stickers, and had the kind of June we hope to improve on every year (drag queen lemonade service anyone?)

By mid-June, the World Cup kicked off and boy were we ready. Country flags lined the shelves and we overhauled our center table for the occasion, offering clear soccer balls customers could “fill your own football” with single-shade M&Ms to honor their flag.

We added chocolate medals and soccer-ball-themed takeaway boxes to fill with candy and make sharing at the beergarden watch parties seamless. Oh - and did we mention stickers? Yes we had them for every. single. country. Much to the shock and delight of some Senegalese neighbors by the way, who we gleefully offered half our roll to!

Football fun will keep going through the end of the Cup, so stop by in July and experience the beautiful game expressed in candy for yourself ⚽️

Bask Suncare came in for our first pop-up collab ever! on June 7, hosting a great afternoon handing out sunscreen and chatting with neighbors on the sidewalk. While our event was postponed due to the Knicksanity of it all, their team will be back to help us host a community book swap around Labor Day.

A couple of quiet additions too: iykyk brand Loonen water joined the merchandiser fridge in both still and sparkling, and we finally fulfilled one of the most common requests we’ve heard since opening (second only to stocking black licorice) — we got actually Swedish fish onto the picl&mix wall, to an exhorbitant amount of fanfare! They’re a bit more berry/cherry and slightly less waxy in texture than the American knockoff we grew up with, but they beat us handily on allergens: vegan, dye-free, and gluten-free.

and now, our June foodbank donation!

About CHiPS - Community Help in Park Slope has been serving Brooklyn since 1971, starting as a drop-in center for women and growing into one of the borough’s most enduring social service organizations. Today, CHiPS runs a weekday soup kitchen serving hundreds of meals a day, a food pantry (where we directed our funds specifically), and a shelter for women experiencing homelessness - all out of their home on 9th Street in Park Slope. They’re neighbor-funded, neighbor-run, and fifty years deep into this work.

About CANDY CAN DO GOOD - In our founding year 2026, Candor has committed to donating $1 to local foodbanks for every Instagram follow, Substack subscription, and Google review we get - directly transforming the community support we receive into support for our neighbors facing food insecurity. Our plan for 2027 and beyond is to begin donating a percentage of total sales to our foodbank partners, deepening that commitment as the business grows.

CANDY CAN DO GOOD progress meter

As of June 30, our community had grown to 3,400 Instagram followers, 94 Substack subscribers, and 58 Google reviews - bringing Candor’s total 2026 foodbank donation commitment to $3,552.

Our first three donations totaled $1,950. Add this $750 to CHiPS and Candor has donated a total of $2,700 so far.

Candor is committed to fulfilling our donation pledge in full. As a brand new business, we’re being thoughtful stewards of our longevity - and as such, donations may lag slightly behind the running count. We’ll report on donations vs commitment - and any gap - honestly and with full transparency until we’ve seen our 2026 commitment through.

up next in July -

Thanks to our pal , Alec’s Ice Cream Summer Roadshow drops by Candor on July 14th; we’ll be slinging custom sundaes in partnership with !

By late July you should start to see our first Candor pre-packaged item hit the shelves — the HIGHLY requested chocolate covered nuts! We couldn’t find any packaging we were excited about, and we love the quality of our chocolate supplier; when we sampled their selection of belgian-dipped almonds, pecans, and cashews, we knew we needed to take matters into our own hands. Tins are on the way, and labels are in development!

A few secrets we can only hint at for now - we’re in early talks around a potential Netflix collab!! Plus, we’re starting work to expand the visuals and digital experience behind our brand (we’re in talks with a suuuuper exciting partner whose work all New Yorkers have seen recently 🤐)

our final post-launch catch up is below for May 2026 - we’ll get our June newsletter out by early July, and continue that way going forward!

happenings;

May brought our local news debut. Kay Angrum from New York Live on NBC New York came to 664 Fulton, supported by videographer Lauren Pechwasser, for a tour of the space and a lap around the candy wall. Kay was so warm and genuinely curious; it was probably the least stressful TV experience imaginable, and we’re grateful she sought us out. If you missed it, the clip is up ad-free on our Instagram.

At the same time, our architect & designer @briancashworks was deep into his own behind-the-scenes series on the making of the shop in a series of collab posts. The custom millwork in black cherry stain, the hand-painted tiles, the window banquettes upholstered in fabric from Hermès’ textile division - I’ll never not take the opportunity to share my favorite shot, this one from the back of the shop.

We cannot say enough about what Brian and the team of contractors, millworkers, and fabricators he assembled have done for this space. It’s such a rare experience to walk into something so warm and inviting in a retail environment; if you have a residential or commercial project you’d like to discuss with him, head to briancash.works to see the full body of his work and get in touch.

Fresh squeezed lemonade launched behind the bar this month - made to order, county-fair style with fresh lemons, organic cane sugar, and a heap of ice. We sold a startling number of them considering how many days have been rainy and 50 degrees since launching! When asked what flavors we should add to the menu, strawberry ran away with the poll, so we’ve got work to do on recipes!

A few other quiet yet beautiful landings - our first non-candy international import, Lumm candles from Mexico City, made their entirety-of-NYC debut on our shelves! We also got our merch display assembled, with hats at $30 and a Candor sweatshirt at $38. Free Candor stickers also hit the counter to a very warm reception - top spot to apply them so far seems to be little helmets ☺️

One of our favorite moments of the month: Allison came in carrying a gorgeous two-layer, two-flavor cake, featured on her baking account @sweetthingbrooklyn - and needed just one thing before it was ready: the perfect gummy finishing touch. She took her time at the pick and mix wall, chose exactly right, and walked out with a cake that was officially complete.

and now, our May foodbank donation!

A bit about City Harvest - City Harvest is New York City’s largest food rescue organization, founded in 1982 by volunteers who started by collecting surplus food from restaurants and delivering it to neighborhood soup kitchens. Today, their trucks run seven days a week, rescuing nearly 90 million pounds of high-quality food this year alone - 75% of it fresh produce - from more than 1,600 donors and delivering it free of charge to pantries, soup kitchens, and mobile markets across all five boroughs. They hold a Candid Platinum seal, the highest transparency rating available to nonprofits, and have put over one billion pounds of food on the tables of New Yorkers in need over more than four decades.

About CANDY CAN DO GOOD - In our founding year 2026, Candor has committed to donating $1 to local food banks for every Instagram follow, Substack subscription, and Google review we receive - directly transforming the community support we receive into support for our neighbors facing food insecurity. Our plan for 2027 and beyond is to begin donating a percentage of total sales to our foodbank partners, deepening that commitment as the business grows.

As of May 1, our community had grown to 2,750 Instagram followers, 80 Substack subscribers, and 50 Google reviews - bringing our total 2026 donation commitment to $2,880.

Our first two donations totaled $950. Add this $1,000 to City Harvest and we’re at a total of $1,950 donated so far.

Candor is committed to fulfilling our donation pledge in full. As a brand new business, we’re being thoughtful stewards of our longevity - as such, donations may lag slightly behind the running count. We’ll continue to report on donations vs commitment honestly and with full transparency until we’ve seen our 2026 commitment through.

up next in June -

Pride month takes over the candy wall June 1, with a World Cup center-table takeover following close behind by the 10th. Our first pop-ups kick off this month too, with Bask Suncare on June 7 and Lit Club NYC on June 9.

This post is about three months late, and we’re not going to pretend otherwise. Between finishing construction, hiring and training staff, building out every operational system from scratch (more than I’d care to admit are still on the to-do list), and then actually opening our doors on March 31 - the newsletter was not the first thing to get done. But the donations were! So let’s catch-up.

dazed and confused on what I’m even talking about? skip below to About CANDY CAN DO GOOD.

Candor made our first donation before a single piece of candy had been sold. To mark of our founder’s January birthday 🥳 we sent $710 to the Clinton Hill Fort Greene Mutual Aid Fund. 710 was the exact number of Instagram followers we had at the time, and we never questioned the best way to celebrate that pre-opening support was to give back.

The second donation came by happy accident. In March, a shelving unit we’d ordered for the backroom storage arrived and turned out to be too long for the nook we’d purchased it for. Rather than return it, we coordinated with a few Fort Greeners who’d been following the shop since our earliest days; in their spare time, they volunteer at Food First Pantry in Red Hook, a program run by New York Cares. They graciously came by, brought the disassembled shelf down to the pantry, and reassembled it for them - a unit that was desperately needed it turns out! That rack was valued at $240.

Going forward, we’ll share reflections on the last month at the shop in this top section - fun partnerships we did, any specials we hosted in-store, events we were a part of, etc. Half newsletter, half donation tracker!

donation 1: $710 to Clinton Hill Fort Greene Mutual Aid

CHFGMA is an all-volunteer, community-run mutual aid organization serving the neighborhoods Candor is directly located in. They connect neighbors to groceries (including offering to shop and deliver for folks with mobility concerns), supplies, laundry, and any other practical day-to-day needs folks have. It’s the kind of quiet work that makes an enormous difference in the lives of people right in our backyard. They run entirely on community support, which means every dollar goes directly to neighbors in need. If you’re local and want to plug in, their website is the place to start.

donation 2: $240 to New York Cares

New York Cares is New York City’s largest volunteer organization, founded in 1987 by a group of friends frustrated by how hard it was to find meaningful ways to show up for their city. Thirty-seven years later, they partner with more than 400 schools and 150 corporations, mobilizing tens of thousands of volunteers each year across programs addressing hunger, homelessness, education, and more. Food First Pantry in Red Hook is one of the many community programs they power on the ground across the five boroughs.

About CANDY CAN DO GOOD - In our founding year 2026, Candor has committed to donating $1 to local food banks for every Instagram follow, Substack subscription, and Google review we receive - directly transforming the community support we receive into support for our neighbors facing food insecurity. Our plan for 2027 and beyond is to begin directly donating a percentage of total sales to our foodbank partners, deepening that commitment as the business grows.

We’re committed to 100% transparency to the community in fulfilling these donations, and that’ll all happen here on Substack as well as our website.

up next -

our final catch up post debuts next week, specific to May (and formatted much more like our permanent structure going forward)

see you shortly⏳ (and sweetly 🍬)

Cat

In case you’re still getting acquainted: Candor is a specialty candy, snack and gift shop in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. We’re female-founded and locally, independently run. While we’re two blocks from Barclays Center, BAM, and nearly every train line in the city, we’re grateful share an historic block with such famous Fort Greene institutions as Habana Outpost and Greenlight Bookstore.

You’ll find us at 664 Fulton St every day from 11a to 10p, opening our doors and filling our 60 pick and mix bins (fully peanut + treenut free btw!), determined to host an ever-rotating wall of international sweets and giftworthy pantry specials.

Click here to get directions to Candor

We were incredibly intentional in designing a true third space; you’ll often hear us chirp “set your bags down on the couches!” or “feel free to use the tables!” when we spy folk trying to hold leftovers and grab candy at the same time. Velvet banquettes, beautiful lighting, and an interior that’s wide and stroller-friendly; we’re a neighborhood shop built into an 1882 brownstone, and we’re maximizing every inch!

So yes - we opened our doors March 31 and were off to the races. Since then we’ve added a few new additions worth knowing about: fresh squeezed lemonade behind the bar, and local delivery is now available at candorcandy.delivery. Custom gifting, event spreads, catering, and special orders can all be arranged through the same link, the best candy-fueled finishing touch brought right to your door.

And the most recent recent update is the one you’re reading right now. We’re committing to this newsletter going forward. This is where we’ll share monthly shop updates, transparently track our Candy Can Do Good donation progress, post about all the popups and collabs we’ve got planned (just had Bask Suncare at the shop yesterday!) and introduce you to the organizations we’re supporting with our donation dollars. Not sure what we mean by that? Understandable; we owe you a few months of catch-up posts, they’re already sitting in drafts 😉. Our goal is to publish once a week so that by end of June, we’re caught up! Not bad for a one woman show.

Thanks for being here. Your support of Candor means more than you know, especially as every one of your subscriptions means there’s another dollar headed to NYC foodbanks.

More soon!