By Leila Azziz, Annika Andersen, and Paul Go
May 26, 2026
Neighborhood Watch is a recurring feature that explores local shops and businesses near and around Bowman.
Every Bowman student knows about it. Every Bowman student has been there. Every Bowman student knows how to get there even though they don’t know the name of the street it’s on. Every Bowman student can agree: life is sweet over there.
The Sweet Shop–on, yes, Los Altos Avenue–is what students from Bowman, Gunn, Fletcher, Santa Rita and Egan have in common. On a sunny spring day, its milkshakes and frozen yogurt are a godsend; on a brisk afternoon, a nibble off its chocolate chip cookies can warm the spirit. Lazy days can be spent on its patio, waiting for friends to drop by. The Sweet Shop isn’t just a candy stop. It’s a veritable institution.
It would be too presumptuous, though, for anyone to think they know everything about the shop.
Sure, people know it’s been around for years, and that it serves an assortment of pastries, sandwiches, coffee drinks, and delightful confections in glass jars. But it’s not common knowledge that, more than 60 years ago, it was a regular food shop; after sitting idle for about four years, in 2008 its current owner, Stacy Savides Sullivan, transformed it into what it is today.
At some point, the Sweet Shop even became The Pet Shop. The site was used for a Hyundai car commercial. The South Korean automobile company wanted to tout its new onboard navigation system. What better destination than The Sweet Shop? But the ad’s producers thought of, for some reason, converting the place into a pet shop. At least Hyundai left the shop the shelves of jars it built for the ad.
Hot paninis and coffee are recent editions to The Sweet Shop and the brainchildren of Sandra, the shop’s manager. They were born out of necessity. One day, Sandra found herself hungry and wanted something filling. So now The Sweet Shop has menu items that are not necessarily, er, sweet.
Since the shop doesn’t have a full kitchen, it buys dough to make its bright croissants and cookies. Everything they serve, though, is sourced in California: the dough is from a bakery in Santa Cruz, and the beans from Verve Coffee Roasters, which originated from the same city.
The mainstays of the shop aren’t just its customers. It has hired lots of high schoolers throughout the years, and some of them have pressed paninis and concocted milkshakes for four years. This hiring tradition binds people from the community together and to their happy place of employment. No doubt, the person punching the register was once merely an avid customer.
No one needs any further enticement to visit The Sweet Shop. Its candy selection is well-curated, varied, and mouth-watering. One can’t get enough of its pastries. The shop’s ambience is the very definition of cozy. But maybe really knowing about The Sweet Shop makes it, impossibly, even more attractive and tempting.
The Sweet Shop
994 Los Altos Avenue, Los Altos, CA 94022
(650) 941-7461