Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Best Deals on Buying Cake Supplies

Photo borrowed from Yelp, because I forgot to take one!
Buying supplies for a small business is a part time job in itself, especially if you are watching your pennies. I have spent hours comparing prices, shipping charges and finding new vendors. For today's blog post I'm going to tell you where I have found the best deals for me. Keep in mind that I live in Georgia so my shipping charges my vary widely from yours.

http://sweetwise.com
FondX, Elite, candy melts, meringue powder, some cake boards and boxes. They have a lot of other tools and such that are equally priced as their competitors. I love "the Mat" and don't think I could cover cakes without it! They also carry Satin Ice but I don't like it so I don't buy it anywhere.

http://www.ckproducts.com
This is for wholesale and you must have a business license but the prices are worth the trouble. There is a $150 minimum but that's pretty easy to spend. I get my cake boards and all sorts of CK products here. My hint, do not get their brand of fondant. It is horrible!

http://www.sugardelites.com
They have so great and unique molds and a nice variety of decorating tools. I also love they special way of wrapping all their packages in a
personal way.

http://www.discountsugarflowers.com. (Wholesale Sugar Flowers)
Cheap and Nice gum paste and royal icing flowers. They have a big selection but sometimes you will need to order ahead a bit. Don't wait to buy peonies you need in June when you need them the next week. They will be out of stock.

Sam's Club and Costco
We buy butter, sugar, eggs, and all the other food staples. We also get aprons and paper towels here. The fresh fruit is so much cheaper than local grocery stores and even wholesale produce companies! Sam's has let me down many times by being out of a staple that I needed. I like having the Costco as a backup.

Local Restaurant Supply Shop
They don't have to see your business license unless you want to be tax exempt. I only buy large quantities of boxes from these guys. They are more expensive until you factor in shipping from the other guys. It's a killer on boxes!

http://caljavaonline.com
Specialty gum paste flowers. These are way more expensive than Wholesale Sugar Flowers, but sometimes that is what you need.

http://www.cakedeco.com  (Pfeil & Holing)
Very lard containers of sanding sugar, jimmies and quinn's. Quinn's are the little circles sprinkles that people are putting a ton on a cake and painting them to look like sequins.

http://sugarartstudio.com
These people have the prettiest gum paste flowers pictured to drool over! They only sell the cutter to make them, but they are great tools! I love all their other cutters for Art Deco, repeating patterns and well everything! Their stuff is great and I don't care how much it costs!

http://www.dallas-foam.com/store/cakedummies.html
Cake styrofoam dummies and separator pieces. They are already cheap, but if you buy $200, you can get a 40% discount, but then you have to buy more!

http://www.polymerclayexpress.com/products/artway-tools
Best and biggest extruded guns and various dies. Love mine!

http://www.globalsugarart.com/index.php
Full disclosure, I used to buy a lot from these guys. I have been finding better prices, shipping and products on the first two sites listed above.

http://www.firstimpressionsmolds.com
Silicone molds with a huge selection! There are sites above that carry these molds, but they don't have the full selection or good sales with nice discounts.

http://www.designerstencils.com
Favorite stencils ever! Just like the molds above, you can get them elsewhere but not with as big of a selection.

Fondarific on Fondarific.com vs. Amazon.com
I use Fondarific for making lots of decorations like bead borders because the chill up hard very quickly so they don't distort when unfolding. A WHOLESALE account with shipping factored in is almost the same price as what I can buy the same thing on Amazon for a few dollars more. I have a Prime membership so I get free two day shipping and that is factored in here. It's kind of a pain buying from Fondarific Wholesale so I'm going to stick with Amazon for this.

I know this was a long post, but we buy from a lot of places. If you have a favorite place to buy supplies, please let us know so we can learn from your experiences too!

2 comments:

  1. Jen you are so helpful with this post, tons of new sites that I didn't even knew existed! I have also spend hours looking for the right vendors, I certainly want to save some pennies.
    Hugs and thank you for sharing

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for sharing! I admire you so much! Not only are you an exceptionally gifted cake artist, you are also a wonderful, sharing lady!

    ReplyDelete

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