Candy Kittens

Jamie Laing wanted to open a cool, fashion-forward sweet shop. But what sweets would be good enough to go in such a shop?

Ed had another idea...

Why not create a sweet especially for adults that looked as great as it tasted?

There were sweets made for kids and sweets for your granny but nothing for big kids who still had a sweet tooth.

Jamie and Ed set about to create a sweet with big flavour, honest ingredients and beautiful packaging... and Candy Kittens was born.

Since the start in 2012, Candy Kittens has been on a journey and has evolved into a 100% vegan brand that can be now be found across UK & the world.

Sustainability

Our aim is to create a responsible business leaving the planet in a better place than we found it.

Being a vegan brand, we avoid ingredients that are harmful to the planet like animal gelatine and palm oil. In addition, as of 2021, our business and our pouches range are carbon neutral.

We hope that by buying Candy Kittens, we give consumers a sweet with a lighter footprint on the earth.

Our ingredients

Since 2018 we've removed all animal gelatine from our recipes. It's been the brand's ambition since the beginning, but we know how important texture is for the overall sweet experience, so we wanted to wait until we could get it just right. We've done this through working with the best sweets manufacturer in the world so we can serve you greener sweets without compromising on taste or texture.

It doesn't stop there - we also refuse to use palm oil in our sweets. Many of the big brands use this ingredient, but it can come at a huge envionmental cost as it's sourced from rainforests that are destroyed to create palm oil plantations. Since rainforests are key to helping cool down the earth, and they house a huge percentage of our biodiversity, this deforestation directly contributes to the climate crisis.

All of our ingredients are very carefully selected to ensure that they are sourced in a responsible way that is least damaging to the planet. This includes the glazing agent used in some of our sweets (those without a sugary coating), carnauba wax. Our carnauba wax supplier is a member of the 'Initiative for Responsible Carnauba' - an organisation who works with companies to foster a responsible carnauba wax production, both improving working conditions and preserving biodiversity. Find out more about this initiative here.

Our Packaging

Our pouches are made from the same material (OPE/PE) as a plastic bag, so you can recycle them along with carrier bags at larger supermarkets and our jars are fully recyclable at home.

Plastic is a great material for storing food - it's safe, it reduces food waste, and it has a much better carbon footprint than materials such as glass. However, it needs to be recycled and kept within the economy to give it a 'circular life' and keep its carbon footprint down.

We've made our packaging recyclable, and now we're focusing on how we can work with our customers to increase the percentage of our pouches that are actually recycled and using recycled materials for our jars.

So one big ask we have is that you recycle your pouches and jars, sending them back into the system so they can be used to make other things, and kept out of the environment.

We know that things are always evolving and we're working on what's next with our packaging. Currently there's limited infrastructure in place in the UK for compostable packaging, so we're looking at alternative substrates such as recycled plastic and paper, taking into account the carbon footprint of the whole lifecycle of the material (it's quite the minefield)! Watch this space.