As a kid growing up in Missoula, Sean Curran loved candy. Halloween was the best holiday, one where he and his friends would grab their pillowcases and conquer the University District, collecting sweets by the hundreds.
“I had to brush my teeth a lot,” Curran says. “I was always the kid that wanted to trick-or-treat until I was too old to be trick-or-treating.”
In one of his later candy-collecting years, Curran’s pillowcase of sweets weighed in at 16 pounds. And even when Curran finally aged out of the tradition and moved away from Missoula, his love for confectionery never died. Living in Coeur d’Alene, he and his three daughters frequented the downtown candy shop — its large windows displaying brightly colored jars of treats, waiting to be devoured.
In 2016, Curran returned to Missoula with a lifelong dream of starting his own business. He began brainstorming ideas. A clothing bin store, maybe. A hiking guide business, perhaps. But nothing really panned out. That is until nearly a decade later, in October 2025, when Curran walked into the for-lease space on the corner of Third Street and Higgins Avenue, a gorgeous Hip Strip storefront, with large windows and a spacious floor plan, that had housed Bathing Beauty Beads for decades.
The desire for a sweet treat and the bright colors of the shop pulled me in like a cartoon character following the smell of a pie.
Curran, immediately reminded of the candy shop in Idaho, was sold. It took some effort to gather the money and time to navigate city requirements. But five months later, on Feb. 12, with the first 4,000 pounds of candy on the shelves, Zootown Sweets opened its doors.
The store’s bulk candy, which runs $15.99 a pound, is kept in pressed glass containers — a style that’s been around since the late 1800s, when glass was molded into the shape of Liberty Bells and trains, comic book characters and dollhouses. In Zootown Sweets, the jars line the windows in rows. The labels, with names like “crybaby tears” and “Boston baked beans,” give you a sense of what you’re in for — or pique your interest. The jars can be seen twinkling from the street, their goods winking at passersby.
I was one such passerby who stumbled across the shop one evening after a couple of beers at Flipper’s, and the desire for a sweet treat and the bright colors of the shop pulled me in like a cartoon character following the smell of a pie.
Inside, the selection of candy spans eras of sweetness. Some of the vessels house the old-fashioned candies you’d find in a crystal candy bowl at your grandmother’s house — the ones you’d lose your first tooth from: hard butterscotch, strawberry bonbons, root beer barrels.
There are the iconic wax bottle candies, which were first marketed in the late 1970s and explode in your mouth with a sugary spurt. (A caution: Apparently you are not supposed to eat the wax. You can chew it, though.)
Other throwbacks include candy cigarettes for the bad boys, the Chick-O-Stick candy bar, and the more divisive candies, like black licorice, which I shudder to think about as I write this.
Last month, Curran added ice cream from Wilcoxson’s, a Livingston-based brand founded in 1912, and encourages customers to pile on candy toppings.
There are the oddities: candy that should not be candy but has been made so, like gummy fried eggs and snakes, which have a surprisingly light texture, and chewy candy hot dogs that taste like plastic. There’s novelty candy like the “Golden Girls”-themed mints.
And of course, there are the viral hits that have consumed our social media feeds, like the pistachio-filled Dubai chocolate, a suggestion from Curran’s daughters.
“As we grow, I’ll fill up the space and make this as colorful and friendly as we can. With as much sweets as we can.”
Actually, lots of elements of Zootown Sweets have been shaped by Curran’s daughters. As anime enthusiasts, they urged Curran to import Japanese treats such as mochi and Kasugai peach gummies. The tween and two teenagers have become his biggest supporters, product pushers and taste testers, making sure to sip on a milkshake or sample candy off the shipped-in pallets whenever they arrive.
They also insisted on a cotton candy machine and a variety of toys, like the trending Labubu doll and stretchy putty.
The space is still a work in progress. The high-ceilinged white room felt sterile for a while, but Curran is slowly stocking it wall-to-wall with sweets and merch. The AI-generated artwork makes the place feel oddly adrift — and people have told him that. In response to the negative feedback, Curran has plans to commission a local mural on the inside walls to fill in the white space and a local window designer to better reflect the artistic spirit of the Hip Strip.
He sees the shop as evolving — open to suggestions. And he’s taking requests for candy, too.
“As we grow, I’ll fill up the space and make this as colorful and friendly as we can,” he says. “With as much sweets as we can.”
