There’s a new, yet nostalgic, ice cream parlour and classic sweet shop opened on the Crystal Palace Triangle, to tantalise the taste buds of children of all ages just in time for the summer.
Old-school sweets: Sweet Child of Mine has just opened in Crystal Palace
Sweet Child of Mine has opened this week at 16 Church Road.
It is run by Sue Allison, a long-standing local resident who noticed there was a gap in the area for a sweet offering providing a mixture of pick and mix and an old-school-style ice cream parlour.
The shop is crammed full of sweet jars offering 50 pick-and-mix flavours including classics like sherbet lemons, chocolate limes, white mice and flying saucers, to newer sweets like rainbow belts and dino sours.
Plus there’s 15 flavours of ice cream from Marshfields, with sorbets, dairy and plant-based cooling treats.
Sweet Child of Mine also stocks delicious British artisan-made small-batch fudge, chocolates and marshmallows. And new lines are being added weekly.
Customers can step back in time, choose to buy a small, medium or large bag, and then go ahead and fill them with a mix of all of their favourite sweets.
The shop also offers party bags and personalised sweet jars which make great gifts.
And Sweet Child of Mine has indoor seating and will be offering “build your own sundae” parties in winter months.
Shop producer: owner Sue Allison
Before starting up every child’s dream sweet shop, Allison worked in television production for more than 25 years on some of the world’s biggest game shows, including as series producer on Ant and Dec’s PokerFace, their million-pound gameshow, and as the original series producer of ratings-busting success The Chase with Bradley Walsh.
“I’ve had a brilliant career but the last couple of years have been really tough for the TV industry,” Allison told Inside Croydon.
“Britain used to be a powerhouse of new formats but it seems those days are over with less ambitious commissioning and budgets and schedules so squeezed that it’s not possible to make shows in the same way. It felt like the time was right to go and do something completely different.
“I wanted to create an attractive and enchanting place that would put smiles on people’s faces – the grown-ups as well as the little children who get transfixed by the rows of jars. We were all once that little kid in the sweet shop and it’s wonderful to see those memories come flooding back.
“And having tasted Marshfield’s Farm ice cream on holiday, it was a no-brainer to partner with them for this venture.
“The hardest part of the whole process was choosing the flavours, as they have so many exceptional options.
“They do the popular flavours brilliantly – chocolate, salted caramel, cookie dough, mint choc chip, but their more unusual flavours are amazing too. Their award-winning blackcurrants with clotted cream is heavenly!”
It has taken Allison around six months to find the right location and pick the right products and suppliers, even down to finding the right sign-writer, designer Hana Sunny, to create the branding, inspired by American ice cream parlour design of the 1950s
Now Allison is confident that Sweet Child of Mine will become the dream sweet shop for her, and others.
Sweet Child of Mine is at 16 Church Road, SE19 2ET, and is open Wednesdays to Sundays (plus Bank Holidays) from noon to 6pm.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
FREE ADS: Paid-up subscribers to Inside Croydon qualify for a free ad for their business, residents’ association or community group, just one of the benefits of being part of our online community. For more information about being an iC subscriber, click here for our Patreon page
PAID ADS: To advertise your services or products to our near 10,000 weekday visitors to the site, which is featured on Google News Showcase and followed by 16,000 on Twitter/X, email us inside.croydon@btinternet.com for our unbeatable ad rates
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
- Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as BBC London News and ITV London
ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
