About Us

At KÄNDI we develop and hand produce highest-quality candy bars and caramels. We think that it is time that candy stops being a cheap commodity and that candy again becomes something to create exceptional moments. That it can tell a story. That it’s not available everywhere at every time, in identical form. And that it is precious.
However, we do not want to use our energy to revive the past. We want to work on our future. That’s why animal-based ingredients are entirely left out to demonstrate that finest taste can just as well be vegan.

Händmade Kändi

All our candy bars and other delights are made by hand in small batches in our KändiLab in Amsterdam Noord.
This really means that we prepare all fillings in an artisanal way. Think of big cooking pots full of bubbling caramel, of weighing, seasoning, stirring, spreading, cutting all done by hand. We know that this way we will never get to the super efficient cheap production of mass-market industry products. But you know what? We don’t even want to 🙂
By doing everything by hand in small batches, we can use best ingredients no matter if their properties vary over time or with the seasons. It allows us to only choose best ingredients based on the flavor, their origin, and their environmental and social impact.
Not having to focus on the ‘averaged’ preferences of the mass market consumer, we make candy with people in mind that enjoy rich compositions of flavors, complex aromas, and high-quality products with attention to the detail. And, we can quickly change recipes, adapt them, improve them, and last but not least: do crazy things [1.or do you think that Mendelez/Nestlé/Mars… would ever consider making beer&pretzel or miso caramels?] !
We feel that this way, candy again becomes what it should be: pleasure, luxury, heavenly delicacy.

How candy became KÄNDI.

Once upon a time a physicist suddenly realized that not only solving differential equations is fun, but also developing and making delicious treats for other people. He encountered many differential equations that apparently did not want to be solved. But it never occurred that nobody wanted to enjoy handmade caramels, chocolates, and candy bars. So it seemed only logical to him to stop being a scientist and to start being a candy maker.

There was only one problem. He had always loved candy as a kid. Growing up, however, it became clear that most candy was actually of very poor quality, it was cheap, and it hence was everywhere, at every time. No more sensation of pure luxury, no more craving for the next delicious bite somewhere in an unforeseeable future.

You have guessed right, he absolutely wanted the sensation of wonder back with the sweets he was about to develop. Not simply ‘candy’ that meant, but KÄNDI. This made him a KÄNDImaker. The first of his kind. This, he found, was anyway much better since he likes K’s and Ä’s (maybe we’re losing track here – a little…).

Ingredients we use

Producing sweets with time to care for the details is one thing. But amazing candy can only be made from amazing ingredients. Nowadays everybody says that. According to the labels, every item in the supermarkets is made from ‘only the best’ ingredients. While in reality is often is ‘only the cheapest, most available’. At Kändi we really take a lot of time to select our ingredients. Where possible we use ingredients from organic farming, currently that means that more than 90% of our total ingredients are organic. Especially the chocolate we use is incredibly important to us. For the coating of all our candy bars we use a premium chocolate from Ecuador, made by Hoja Verde in Ecuador. That alone is very special. Most chocolate that we see around us came to Europe in form of beans and then was processed by one of few huge factories. This way much of the added value remains in Europe. In addition, all of the regular supermarket chocolate is made from very poor-quality cocoa beans and worst of all: it is bought from farmers at a ridiculously low price. The chocolate we use is grown by about 400 farmers that form a cooperative. And since they select high-quality beans and have the proper training to deal with complex steps such as fermentation and drying, their beans give much higher prices than the so called ‘bulk’ cocoa.
For some of our fillings we in addition use another special chocolate which comes from Madagascar. Again, this chocolate is grown AND made into chocolate in the country of origin (Chocolaterie Robert).

Click here to see a more detailed list of our ingredient sources.