Nina Bryan has been serving her Sweet Nina’s pudding cups from her stand at the Reading Terminal Market since 2017 as part of the Market’s Day Stall Merchant Program. The great news for banana pudding and dessert lovers in Philadelphia is that Sweet Nina’s will be moving into a permanent stand at the Market around the end of May. Sweet Nina’s pudding cups were named the best dessert in Philadelphia by none other than Philadelphia Magazine and in the year 2020, the stand sold over 10 thousand banana pudding cups.
Sweet Nina’s has nine different banana pudding flavors and the stand also has seasonal flavors like blueberry, pineapple, and coffee. The pudding is made from her mother’s classic Southern recipe. Bryan makes her own whipped cream and one of the differences between Sweet Nina’s and the pudding competition is that Sweet Nina’s pudding is very light in texture. The particular pudding cup that put Sweet Nina’s on the map was the Nutter Butter cup which comes in two flavors, vanilla, and chocolate.
Bryan does have plans to expand her line of desserts and wants to eventually branch out into different types of menu items. When What Now Philadelphia spoke with Bryan via phone, she said that she had already introduced her pound cake through the pudding cups and would like to collaborate with bakers who decorate cakes to make custom wedding and birthday cakes. Phase two of Bryan’s plan for the future is to introduce quiches to the menu as “no ordinary quiche”. These quiches would have non-traditional shapes like squares rather than rounds. Bryan told What Now Philadelphia that people that have tasted previews of the quiche Bryan wants to serve have said, “there’s something really special about this quiche.”
