Glasgow's Glickman's Sweets: A family legacy in confectionery at Glasgow's oldest sweet shop

Irene Birkett and daughter Julie are now behind the counter of the long-running confectionary shop in Glasgow’s East End. It has been a storied life for one of the city’s most beloved shops. However, some of that story, perhaps due to the very nature of how long it has been going, has been lost to time.

“I know this is peculiar, but I don't really know the history of it. I just know from the day I was born, it was there. My dad worked in it, and his two sisters. Prior to that, it was my grandfather's. How it got there, I don't know,” Irene says.

What we do know is that it was opened by Isaac Glickman in 1903 and has been passed down the generations from Irene’s grandfather to father and now on to Irene herself. However, it was perhaps not always the plan to continue on with the story.

“My dad died in 1989 and the lawyer handed me the keys, and he said, ‘What are you doing with it?’ And I looked at Julie, she was going to uni, she said, ‘Well, I don't know what to do.’ I said ‘Well, I'm working in an office. So why don't we try it for a year or two and see what happens?’” Irene explains. 35 years later the pair are still there

The legacy of the business was secured in a series of manuals and recipes left behind by Isaac, dating back to the early 1900s. Inexperienced in making the famous sweets, Irene and Julie took them to a food technologist in the city - Louis Free.

And like many in the city, Louis had a personal connection with Glickman’s. “He said, ‘Where did you get these books?’ And I said, ‘Well, my father's died, and we don't know what to do. We don't know whether to keep the shop on, but this is how we make all the homemade stuff’,” explains Irene. “He says, ‘I come in every week for my floral gums,’ he said ‘you can’t close it.’”

Irene and Julie spent two years at college where they worked out the recipes, following and deciphering Isaac’s instructions. “And henceforth, we became confectioners,” Irene laughs.

As confectioners, however unlikely, Irene and Julie have proven successful in continuing what has always made the shop special. Irene says she believes that the shop can rely on a number of things to continue that, that the sweets are fresh and, perhaps most importantly, that the shop has become a generational touchpoint for Glaswegians.

“There was a school across the road in Charlotte Street, the girls in brown. They came to the shop all the time when my dad was there, and they grew up, and they have their families, and their families come and their friends of their families. So it becomes widespread from just a dot in the paper,” says Irene.

And it is possible to find Glickman's diaspora right across the city according to Irene, “Where I live, one of my neighbors about five doors up came and chapped my door, and she said ‘I went to Glickman’s when I was in school across the road.’” she says with pride. “It shows it's all spread out now she still comes in with some of our friends. And so it was on. A lot of our customers, I would say, are regulars or friends of aunties, grannies.”

That generational longevity has seen the shop, and Irene and Julie woven into the community. The pair have been invited to weddings and christenings, if you take one look on the shop’s social media page you can see those interactions with the community. “I also think it's because we're lovely, Julie and I are just lovely, and we love to talk,” says Irene.

Irene says the shop plays its role in a way of life that older generations are used to, before the ubiquitousness of supermarkets.

“People have been used to the corner shop. I know when my children were young, I used to go to the corner shop because we didn't really have supermarkets. It's a way of life that an older generation has, because we've been used to shopping in small shops,” she explains.

But it is their ability to connect with the people, young and old, is what helps to engrain the shop’s importance in the community in the face of competition from bigger, national stores and supermarkets. It is how shops like Glickman’s can stand the test of time.

“Now, what happened, and it’s only my opinion, along comes big stores B&M, Home Bargains. I can't compete with them. I can't even buy the sweets in at their prices. So I struggle against these ones”, Julie says. “Even the supermarkets have all got sweets at prices I couldn't afford because I can't even buy it in so I've got to shop around and see what I can get for the best value. And it's not easy when there's just two of us, but we do, we get by. I think people know we might be two pence, five pence dearer than ASDA, but they know us.”

At the end of it all, it is because of that “they know us” that customers will continue to go back to Glickman’s for as long as it stands. Like many small businesses across the city, it is not just a shop, it is a friendly face, a gateway to nostalgia and almost certainly a Glasgow icon.