Beloved Cork sweet shop faces busiest festive season yet after Roy Keane shout-out

What Shandon Sweets owner Tony Linehan thought would be a quiet November is now looking like it will be the busiest for him yet

Cork’s most beloved sweet shop, Shandon Sweets, is anticipating its busiest festive season to date after receiving a glowing review from none other than Cork’s own Roy Keane.

While it might take a lot to impress Keane, the football legend spoke highly of the traditional sweet shop while handing out its famous boiled sweets on the set of The Overlap’s Stick to Football podcast.

A clip, released on The Overlap’s social media accounts, shows Keane enthusiastically offering the sweets to the podcast’s crew, including his co-host Jill Scott.

He proudly exclaims that the sweets are from Ireland, more specifically, “a famous shop in Cork”.

Tucked away on John Redmond Street in Shandon, Shandon Sweets, managed by Tony Linehan, has established itself as part of the fabric of the city, making sweets the same way with the main ingredients of sugar, water, and glucose, for almost one hundred years.

Keane is seen in the clip to appreciate the ethos of the shop, which is well-known for its small operation and traditional way of making boiled sweets such as the clove rocks, pear drops, bullseyes, and apple drops.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner, Tony Linehan said that what he thought would be a quiet November is now looking like it will be the busiest for him yet.

Linehan said there has been a huge surge in online orders since the video went viral, which he is extremely grateful for.

“There have been reams after reams of orders, some of them were even coming in at 3am and 4am. I've plenty of stock, so I can just drive on into Christmas. We would usually be extremely busy from maybe the last week in November until about December 20, but now feels like Christmas for me with the amount of online orders coming in,” he said.

Linehan said that Keane often pops into the shop when back home in Cork, but said he didn’t expect that the boiled sweets he bought a few weeks back would be handed out to the crew of The Overlap’s podcast.

“It’s the last thing I expected. I just couldn’t believe it. I mean, what bigger accolade can you get?,” Linehan said.

Tony Linehan of Shandon Sweets on John Redmond St, Shandon, Cork with his famous handmade cut clove rocks which was one of the packets of sweets Roy Keane purchased to hand out on the Overlap show. Picture: Dan Linehan

Linehan said it has reminded him how important the shop, which has been open for 97 years, is to the people of Cork.

“For me, it’s my nine-to-five job, but for people, it is part of the fabric of Cork,” he said.

“It was my father Danny’s shop before I took it over five years ago. It was my grandfather, Jimmy, who started it, and they always kept it small. I think being situated in the heart of Shandon is what sells it, because of the history attached to it,” he said.

“If we moved out to an industrial estate, I think we'd probably lose all that. We keep it nice and small, but one thing I always do is keep a quality product, because if you let the quality of your product slip, you don't get fellas like Roy Keane plugging you.”