In this series for T, author Reggie Nadelson visits New York institutions that have been cool for decades, from time-honoured restaurants to unsung dives.
It is said that Economy Candy on Rivington Street is the oldest surviving store of its kind in New York City. Dating back to 1937, it not only sells a wide variety of candies — a whopping 2,000 different kinds, according to the owners, from licorice to chocolate, root beer kegs to jelly beans — but also the nostalgia that comes with finding your favorite kid’s treat. The last time I passed by, on a cold December day, was a triumph by this measure: the owners, Mitchell Cohen, 36, and Skye Greenfield Cohen, 32, had saved me some Bonomo Turkish Taffy. Because this is a store that stocks so much vintage candy, Cohen and Greenfield Cohen are always besieged by sentimental regulars. “Yesterday someone came to ask for Turkish Taffy,” Cohen told me. “But we only had three bars left, so we said we were sorry, but they were for someone else.” I thanked him as if he had put aside the last glances of a rare caviar.
As a kid I loved Turkish Taffy, as well as the commercials: “Give it a slap! Give it a chance!” went the jingle. Made from fried egg whites and corn syrup, it was invented, according to the company’s current lore, by Herman Herer, an Austrian immigrant, in New York City in 1912. Unable to wait until I got home, I jumped outside the store and punched the bar close to the wall, just like we did when we were kids. I peeled off the smooth yellow and white plastic wrap and inside the shards still had a somewhat peculiar orange-yellow color and a nougat-like texture: hard and just a little tacky. I didn’t let the pieces melt in my mouth, as children were often advised, but chewed. They stuck to my teeth, intensely sweet and sublime.
Almost every type of vintage candy has its own story, fans and even addicts, and Economy Candy’s regulars include quite a few celebrities. At her 21st birthday concert at New York’s Roseland Ballroom in 2009, Adele handed out candies to the audience after expressing her affection for the store.
And no wonder. Economy Candy is a pleasure palace for shoppers of all ages: 2,000 square feet filled with sweet things — Jelly Belly and Hershey’s Kisses, gummy worms, and Jordan almonds in pastel purples, pinks, blues, and yellows. On the highest shelves are collectibles, including vintage gumball machines, and in the center of the space are tables strained almost under the weight of countless stacked boxes of chocolate bars and licorice, hard candies, and Pop Rocks.
Cohen, whose parents, Jerry and Ilene Cohen, ran the store before him, grew up here. As a child he liked to stand on a milk crate behind the counter and exchange for customers. (He said he got so good at math.) After a detour into finance after college, he came back to the shop. As is the case with so many New York food establishments run by third- and even fourth-generation retailers — including the savory empire Russ & Daughters, Italian specialty retailer Di Palo’s, and German butcher shop Schaller & Weber — Economy Candy has largely been preserved. , keeping its traditions alive, because of the passion and energy of the young owners.
Greenfield Cohen, who is married to Cohen, is also one of the custodians of family history. Before the store moved to its current location at 108 Rivington Street in the early 1980s, she said, it was half a block away on the corner of Rivington and Essex Streets. And before it was a candy store, it was a shoe and hat repair business. “Depending on who you ask, it was King’s Shoes or Economy Shoes,” she said. “The story goes that at the urging of Mitchell’s great-aunt Jenny, who was still a child at the time, the family opened a pushcart with candy outside.” It became a full-fledged candy store in the late 1930s because in the depths of the Great Depression, candy was better than shoe repairs.
When Cohen’s grandfather Morris “Moishe” Cohen returned from combat in World War II, he and his brother-in-law, also a veteran, ran the shop. In 1981, before Mitchell Cohen was born, Jerry and Ilene took over and in 2013, Cohen left his position at Morgan Stanley to return to work with his parents. “Four years later, I left my job, in advertising, to join Mitchell,” said Greenfield Cohen. Cohen had taken her to the store on their first date. (“I didn’t know my parents were there,” he said with a laugh.)
During the pandemic lockdown, when they had to temporarily close the store, the couple used the time to brighten up the space, lay a new floor and reorganize the candy assortment on the different tables. I miss the randomness a bit, the chance of chance discoveries, but in these cautious times it makes sense. They also expanded their online business. “People would send neighbors—sometimes in the same town or even next door—a candy package to say they were thinking of them when they couldn’t come by,” Cohen says.
But nothing compares to losing yourself personally at Economy Candy. Whenever I walk in, it’s like the surrounding sugar is giving me a contact high. There are the American classics, including my own favorites: the Clark Bar, invented in Pittsburgh in 1917, with a crunchy, peanut-like fudge center covered in milk chocolate, and the Chunky, a heavy square of chocolate-covered raisins and peanuts made in New York. in the thirties. There are entire sections devoted to imported delights: Crunchies from Great Britain, Violet Crumble from Australia, real German Haribo. And then there are the luxurious chocolates, dried fruits and nuts, the Joyva halvah sold by the piece or by the loaf. Greenfield Cohen himself can’t resist the chocolate-covered graham crackers and pretzels. But it’s the penny candies that have the biggest draw for me, because these miniature treats are how New York’s obsession with candy was first satisfied on an industrial scale.
In the late 18th and early 1800s, confectioners created delicacies such as marzipan greens, sugar-coated rose petals, and even elaborate landscapes made of sweets (many followed recipes from the tea shops and ballrooms of Paris and London), which were almost entirely intended for the rich. More affordable mass-produced treats — such as Necco Wafers, Tootsie Rolls, and Hershey’s Kisses — came later, in the mid and late 1800s. Long before the residents of the Lower East Side drank $20 cocktails, the neighborhood was a working-class neighborhood and candy became a workers’ delight. It broke through in the city when millions of immigrants arrived and found jobs on construction sites or doing piecework – a penny for a few minutes of fun was often as much as Lower East Siders could afford, and shops and pushcarts selling candy appeared on seemingly every street. By the early 1900s, according to Greenfield Cohen, popular penny candies were Mary Janes, Bit-O-Honeys, Chick-O-Sticks, Bullseyes, and Sour Balls. ‘Unfortunately,’ she said, ‘nothing costs a penny anymore. It now comes down to about five cents each.”
Yet the joy of those humble, ephemeral pleasures has never faded. When I was there it was almost vacation time. Passing under the chubby kid (tummy visible, arms outstretched with joy) who has been Economy Candy’s logo since the 1990s, which adorns the flag above the door, I went inside and let myself sink back into the joys of childhood. Here were chocolate menorahs and Santa-shaped Pez dispensers. There were Hershey’s Kisses with candy cane flavor and peppermint bark. Dancing sugar plums may be some people’s Christmas spirit, but this year, as always, all I wanted was a sleigh full of good old-fashioned candies.
