About Us

Lâlehan's story began in 1958 in a one-cauldron Turkish delight shop opened by Şükrü Usta on Kurtuluş Avenue in Afyonkarahisar. Şükrü Usta had learned the trade as an apprentice in an Istanbul confectioner's and, on returning home, brought Afyon's famous clotted cream together with Turkish delight. The shop's name comes from his admiration for the refined sweets of the Ottoman Tulip Era (Lâle Devri).

Three generations

In 1985 his son Nevzat Bey took over; he added akide and sugared almonds to the range and bought a second and third cauldron. In 2012 the grandchildren, Elif and Tolga Lâlehan, moved production to a new workshop in the Afyonkarahisar Organised Industrial Zone; the shop on Kurtuluş Avenue remained as our retail store.

How we make it

• Our delights cook for 4.5–5 hours in copper cauldrons; we use no accelerators or preservatives.
• For cream delight we collect clotted cream from two Afyon dairies every morning.
• Akide is still pulled by hand on a marble counter and cut with scissors.
• Every box has a batch number and can be traced from raw material to shelf.

Our certificates

Our workshop is a food business registered with the Afyonkarahisar Provincial Directorate of Agriculture and Forestry (registration no. TR-03-K-002814). Our ISO 22000:2018 Food Safety Management System and halal certificates are published on the Documents page.

Today

With a team of 28 we produce about 18 tonnes of Turkish delight and sweets a month and reach more than 140 delis, gift shops and rest stops across Türkiye as retailers. Still, our favourite place is the counter of our first shop on Kurtuluş Avenue: where visitors to Afyon taste cream delight for the first time.