About Spavens

Spaven’s originally started trading as a newsagent (which also sold sweets) from retail premises located in the market town of Mold, North Wales. As time progressed we made the decision to operate the business purely as a sweetshop, specialising in the traditional “retro” sweet market. This market has seen (and continues to see) significant growth as it captures the imagination of adults re-living
their youth, as well as serving the traditional school-age children’s market.

In order to grow the business we added a few extra lines (home-made fudge, crepes, ice cream, milk shakes, candy floss, popcorn etc) as well setting aside additional space for use as an “eat-in” cafe and a “crafts” section in which visitors painted clay and wooden items.
…and the Parties

The idea of running children’s parties developed, initially in response to a customer inquiry.
The children’s party concept was simple; children will come to a party in a sweet shop! Usually at the invitation of a child with a birthday, a group of around 10 to 30 children will attend the party, at which they will each be given an unpainted jar, and taken through to a (highly supervised) art area. There they will paint their jar, personalising it to add their names and any other decoration they like, in a fun and lively environment.

They will then be taken back through to the sweetshop where they can choose any sweets they like and try to cram as many into the jar as possible. Again, this is heavily supervised but with the emphasis on fun. At various stages throughout the party they will be provided with crepes, ice creams and drinks, and then they are offered a choice of craft items (pottery or wooden items) to take back to the crafts area and decorate.

During this period the staff also put the (now full) sweet jars into a “goody bag” containing various other items, which will ultimately have the decorated craft item added before the children are returned to their parents.

Each party lasts 1 hour 45 mins and operates to a very carefully structured schedule.

Bookings for parties or craft activities to be made by phoning (01352 752695) please as times and dates go very quickly and can go before we can get back to you.

Importantly, the parents are kept entertained too, as with a wait of just under 2hrs they usually prefer to remain on the premises than drive home. For this reason each shop has a parents’ waiting area, in which they are provided with free tea and coffee, and food (at cost) if they request it.

As they usually all know each other (typically being parents of the group of schoolfriends) this becomes a social event for them too. It also works for them to see the children so well looked-after, and clearly having such an enjoyable time.

The demand for parties is now so high that the Mold branch is fully booked for several months in advance, with children and adults attending from all over the UK. The business tends to do its own marketing automatically, as each child attending a party usually wants to host his or her own party when the occasion arises, and a group of parents watching all of this happening soon come up with the idea of organising one for themselves.

We are regularly approached by customers asking “where their nearest Spaven’s is”, as they want to hold parties nearer to home and it was this steadily increasing demand for outlets to be opened nationally which led us to the decision to franchise the business.

With the support of our franchise team, which includes the owners of the original outlet plus specially trained staff and industry-leading franchise experts, our franchisees are now able to enjoy the benefits of the proven Spaven’s system, but without the hard work of creating the business model and developing the concept themselves.