Holly Brook chanced at making boozy, boiled sweets after finding an old Victorian recipe for the classic confectionary. She has sold more than 120,000 sweets in her first year of production and made her debut TV appearance.
Twenty-four-year-old Holly Brook started her road to success in the summer of 2013 before completing her third year at the University of Bath. The psychology student started her own food blog Mess Makes Food where she began to experimenting making sweets. When she returned to university, she continued creating her treats in the student kitchen that she shared with 21 other people.
She first started by whipping up batches of chocolates and fudges before finding a Victorian recipe for hand-poured lollipops. Now Holly specialises in creating alcoholic sweets, including humbugs, rock, and her famous lollipops which come in a variety of flavours. This was the first hand-made sweet company to include real alcohol in sweets, and the flavours include peach bellini, gin & tonic, as well as pina colada flavoured treats.
IMAGE // HOLLY’S LOLLIES
Understandably the alcohol element made her sweets a huge hit with her university pals, and while she was in her third year she also ran a popular Etsy shop. She soon discovered people loved her sweets, and after gaining coverage on websites and blogs, she attracted interest from wedding shops and wholesale buyers.
Eventually this had to give way for Holly to pursue her degree, and once she found a job in marketing, her confectionary business was brought to a halt. But her passion for sweet-making never let up, and a year after she started her marketing job, and with encouragement from friends and family, she took the bold decision to leave her job and make her artisan sweets full time – all on her own.
Even though she’s only been trading for the best part of a year, she’s sold more than 120,000 of her adult treats, and TV personality and presenter Jonathan Ross is said to be a big fan of her confectionary!
She herself has made a number of appearances on TV showing celebrities how to make the perfect boiled sweet: “I featured on Kirsty’s Handmade Christmas last year and taught her how to make lollipops. It was terrifying, but amazing at the same time, I had such a great time.”
She has also been providing orders for a famous Scottish TV presenter, but Holly is reluctant to reveal the identity of her elusive Gaelic client. Needless to say, with celebs ordering her sweets, debuting on TV, and making a return of over £300,000 in her first year, business isn’t bad for this small-town entrepreneur.
Celeb clients aside, Holly also has a big clientele by making personalised lollipops and sweets for weddings and many other special occasions, with a number of newly-weds giving her sweets out to their guests as wedding favours.
“We are an adult sweet shop, and everyone loves that ‘kid in a sweet shop feeling’,” says Holly.We were the first people to develop boozy hard candy and are still the only ones selling boiled sweets made with actual alcohol in. I never thought I would have this much success in a million years.”
“We were the first people to develop boozy hard candy and are still the only ones selling boiled sweets made with actual alcohol in. I never thought I would have this much success in a million years.”
“In the beginning, I had 13 orders in one day and we kicked off a full-blown celebration and opened a bottle of bubbly. This Christmas we had nearly 100 times that number some days! I can’t get over it, it doesn’t seem real.”
Holly nostalgically remembers the first few months from when her business went live: “I set up in September 2015 and I had sold 20,000 lollipops in the lead up to Christmas. I couldn’t believe it was going so well. I worked 18 hour days for two months to get them all done and shipped. It was just me in a tiny kitchen, I had no staff and no premises.”
She now has a small team to keep up with her orders and a commercial kitchen, both of whivh help her ship out tens of thousands of orders a month. On average, she ships out 10,000 sweets each month, but in the lead-up to Christmas her orders quadruple and a mind-boggling 40,000 boozy sweets leave her kitchen!
Holly’s lollies have their own website where you can order sweets directly from and they are also available to buy at: notonthehighstreet.com.
BY BECKY BARGH
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