Roy Keane spurs busiest season yet for century old sweet shop in Cork

When Roy Keane called into Shandon Sweets last month to buy sweets, Tony Linehan had no idea that his old friend was about to make the 100-year-old sweet shop world famous.

“Roy has been coming in here for more than 40 years, whether people know it or not,” Tony told The Echo.

“Being a Rockmount boy, they used to meet to up here at the top of the street when he used to play for Rockmount, and he just pops his head in every now and then for a few sweets when he’s home.

“But when he was in a few weeks ago, little did I expect that he would dish them out to the crew on The Overlap and do a product placement from me as well. I couldn’t have asked for that sort of advertising, I couldn’t.” That was exactly what the football legend did on the set of The Overlap’s Stick to Football podcast, offering the cast and crew “Sweets from Cork, Shandon Sweets, the best, the best you’ll get”.

In a clip released on the podcast’s social media accounts, he tells his co-host, Jill Scott, the boiled sweets are from “a famous shop in Cork, it’s a proper, old-fashioned sweet shop, aw it’s class”.

Few in Cork with disagree with that description, and the shop, which is also Ireland’s last remaining factory producing hand-made sweets, is approaching its hundredth birthday.

Founded in the 1920s by Tony’s grandfather Jimmy, it began life as the Exchange Toffee Works, and a century later, it is still going strong in its John Redmond St premises which once served as stables for horses serving the nearby Butter Market.

Jimmy’s son Danny began working there in his childhood, eventually taking over, before Tony inherited the job years later.

Pride of place inside the door is a photo of a younger Roy with Tony’s late mam, Betty, and his dad Danny.

Nearby is a sign explaining the shop’s history. It tells in loving detail the traditional process of sweet-making, describing the making of a batch of clove rocks, a process which remains unchanged today.

“The huge copper pans,” it reads, “The moulding machines, even the recipe, are the same since Dan’s father founded the factory. Today, the methods used in the manufacture of sweets (are) the same as back in the 1920s.

“The secret mixture is boiled to a high temperature for three quarters of an hour. Then this hot, viscous liquid is poured onto a large metal table. Now the colours and flavours are added. From here begins the Shaping Process. As the mixture solidifies in about fifteen minutes, they have to be very fast and sure in their movements. The mixture is pulled and rolled into strips of about four feet (which) are then fed into a chopping machine.” Since Roy gave his favourite sweetshop a boost, business has been booming.

“Normally, November is quiet enough, we’d be just tipping away nicely, until the first week of December, and then tree weeks of madness, but it’s the opposite now, the phone is off the hook non-stop and the online orders are through the roof,” Tony said.

“I’ll tell ya one thing, Roy will be getting the next batch of sweets on the house!”