You’re here from TikTok, aren’t you?
If you’ve spent any amount of time on TikTok, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Dave’s Sweet Tooth Toffee. That’s probably why you’re here, researching if they are actually good or not and perhaps learn more about the business.
For the unaware, Dave’s Sweet Tooth Toffee is a viral toffee company that has seen huge success on TikTok, largely attributed to their extremely polarizing political content and also their highly rated toffee.
However, clever marketing can only take a company so far but the reviews clearly show that Dave’s Sweet Tooth Toffee makes excellent toffee, so let’s see what’s the driving force of this toffee company.
The story of Dave’s Sweet Tooth has been well documented across multiple news outlets and journalists (mostly all paywalled… thanks capitalism), so I’ll keep the backstory brief. The company was founded by Dave and Andrew Chmielewsk, a father-son duo. Dave was a Detroit, Michigan Firefighter with a penchant for baking and sharing his confections with his colleagues. The original toffee recipe was given to Dave while on a picnic, after which he further tweaked it to make it his own.
It’s a fun fact knowing the original recipe was actually not Dave’s, however, with his baking proficiency, he was able to differentiate it enough to call it his own. I wonder how the friend feels today being the inspiration for the business!
Soon enough, the improved toffee became so popular with Dave’s firefighter colleagues that the family needed to start charging for it due to constant demand and expenses to make it. It was at this point Dave and Andrew realized they may have a real business on their hands. To the extent that Andrew straight up dropped out of college to pursue this endeavor. Is this going to be another “college dropout turned billionaire success story”? Spoiler, nah it’s not and Andrew is a modest man to this day and is still very active as the face of the brand as of writing this.
So 2011 rolls around and the family officially established the business, Dave’s Sweet Tooth Toffee, as you know it today. Dave and Andrew began visiting craft shows and continued finding major success. The toffee was exploding in popularity so fast that by 2017, Andrew had made the 30 under 30 list and was selling to big box stores such as Kroger and Whole Foods in just six short years.
Side note: is anyone else shocked to know toffee is still around? What I find impressive about Dave’s story is that people are still buying toffee. Most of us associate toffee with the older generations, and that’s not always fondly, mind you. Apparently, the toffee industry reaches about $3-5 billion a year, and is making a resurgence in large part due to nostalgia. I personally haven’t seen toffee in what seems like decades, so good for Dave’s Sweet Tooth for carving out a niche. Below is how I still imagine toffee.
Anyway, as the business continued growing, Andrew brought his product to TikTok and found another massive surge in branding and sales. From my initial research, it seems Andrew only started using social media around 2024 to officially promote Dave’s Sweet Tooth Toffee. The content started as any family business does, mostly production videos, packing products, and promotional content.
But what really took Dave’s Sweet Tooth Toffee to the next level was a very risky move but it definitely paid off. That was going going all in on political commentary, specifically, mocking the Trump administration, going as far as creating products to ride the trends. As of writing this, the green algae toffee is available, obviously referencing the reflecting pool disaster. My speculation is that Andrew has made enough money to live comfortably for his family and instead of selling the business, he just speaks his mind and stays true to his values, which I find admirable.
Now it’s time to look at the product; arguably the most important part of this review. Because Dave’s Sweet Tooth Toffee prides itself on being family-owned, handmade, and no preservatives or artificial flavors. For the most part, Dave’s passes most of these claims, but there are some caveats doing some “heavy lifting”. Let’s dig into some of these claims and ingredients.
Almonds, sugar, and butter lead the ingredients on most products. If you didn’t know, ingredient lists are in descending order by weight, with the top ingredients making up a majority of the product. Many toffee companies have sugars and palm oil blends as their first ingredients.
Off to a good start, but then the ingredients become a bit questionable. The chocolate used by Dave’s is sourced third party because it contains palm oils, which is a sustainability nightmare, then there’s soy lecithin listed twice, and natural flavors.
As far as ingredients go, these are more on the mild side. I cover a lot of chocolate brands on this website, so when I see a business using low quality and (probably) unethically sourced chocolate, it hurts me. I’d like to see pure chocolate without palm oils and lecithins diluting the flavor and furthering the destruction of agricultural communities. The [dark chocolate coating] alone contains eight ingredients. So while Dave’s Toffee only contains “five” ingredients, one of those ingredients has eight ingredients…
Since soy lecithin is added twice, this means it’s being used in the chocolate coating, but Andrew himself adds it to the toffee, most likely to help the toffee bind together at high temperatures. Is there an alternative though? Not really. The chocolate being sourced is low quality, but it’s also how Andrew keeps the price of the chocolate covered toffee at a reasonable price and makes melting the toffee together easier.
On a whim during a TikTok Live, I decided to give Dave’s Sweet Tooth Toffee a try and bought two bundles of the triple pack, comically known as the “Tri-partisan pack”. Flavors included: peanut butter, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, lemon, blueberry, and raspberry.
I was pleasantly surprised to see how thick and chunky the toffee was, and how generously decorated with toppings they were. My favorite was the peanut butter. It had a real nice crunch but was very smooth. The runner up was the lemon and then the dark chocolate. All the flavors are bold and distinctive and there’s no lingering after taste. I found whole blueberries in my toffee as seen in the picture, which definitely gave credence to the “cleaner” toffee claim. So for a mostly clean, small business toffee company, I can definitely recommend Dave’s Sweet Tooth Toffee.
There is one major warning. If you have poor quality teeth, you need to chew strategically. I don’t have the best teeth these days and at first I took a whole bite and chewed with full strength. The toffee stuck to my teeth like cement and the sugar hurt my fillings. On subsequent bites, I had to chew much softer and rinse my teeth after. I don’t blame Dave’s toffee for this, it is toffee after all, but Dave’s markets itself as an easier to chew toffee which makes me wonder how hard are the other toffees?? Just be warned, the stickiness is real.
If you see Dave’s Sweet Tooth Toffee on TikTok, join a live and grab a discount and get some toffee for yourself. It’s not the cleanest, but it’s far from the worst, it’s affordable, and you know you are supporting a good family business.