Hi, my name is Alona Tokar.
 
I’m co-founder of the family candy manufactory LOL&POP, which produces gourmet handcrafted sweets, including hard candy, marshmallows, jellies, caramels, and sugar-free lollipops.
 
In 2013, my family and I established a candy manufactory. My daughter Ivanka inspired me, and American TV host and entrepreneur Martha Stewart was the person who lit up the idea of making candy in my head. We found a trainer in Australia; he came to Ukraine for 1 month and taught us how to make hard candy with different words and pictures inside.
 
 

In 2013, LOL&POP had 2 employees, a small production facility of 300 sq feet, annual sales of 1000 kg of candy, and 3 SKUs.

In 2024 we have a team of 9 full-time employees and 5 part-time/seasonal employees, a production facility which is 2000 sq feet, almost 140 skus, and annual sales of more than 50 000 kg of candy—experience of franchising in Poland, Bulgaria and Israel from 2015 to 2017. And in 2020 we started to export our sweets to the US.

 

 

All our candies are 100% handcrafted and made with natural ingredients, and we keep clean labeling on all our sweets. We don’t use any artificial flavors or colors. All colors in our candy are plant-sourced, and they don’t even have an E-index because they are made of fruits, vegetables, and edible plants. Our hard candy and lollipops are vegan.

As for jellies and marshmallows, we use gelatin, which is rich in protein and has a unique amino acid profile.

In our portfolio we, we have an innovative product, sugar-free lollipop with freeze-dried fruits and berries.

 

These lollipops have only 2 to 3 ingredients on the list. They can come with flavor or without flavor. As for the sugar substitute, we use Isomalt. We’ve done a lot of research on sugar substitutes and chose Isomalt because it has a low glycemic index - 2, does not cause decay, is a good probiotic, has 2 calories per gram, and has excellent taste and texture, which is very similar to sugar. We add freeze-dried berries and fruits to these lollipops, like mango, pineapple, raspberry, strawberry, and black currant, and we have a variety to add more. Freeze-dried fruits contain almost 95% of nutrients and vitamins compared to fresh fruit.

We call these lollipops our superfood in the world of sweets.

The shelf life of our products is 12 months for hard candy and lollipops and 9 months for jellies and marshmallows.

Our products are also good for gifts and occasional markets because we have special dedicated candy for different holidays and occasions.

You can find our catalogue here.