If you're wondering about how to start a sprinkle business, you probably have questions about where to get the supplies, how to market your products, and whether it's something that could be profitable in the long run.
Custom sprinkle mixes are a popular option for these types of businesses, and another example of this is the pressed sugar lay-ons that people buy to place on cupcakes.
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To start a sprinkle business, you will need to do market research to see if you can provide a product that will be desirable and within acceptable market price points. By sourcing sprinkles directly from wholesalers you can create unique mixtures of different shapes and colors, then sell those as custom combinations.
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It's also important to verify that you can run a food business based on your local laws and any regulations pertaining to selling edible cake decorations.
If you're willing to keep a lot of inventory on hand it could be a good option, but it may take a lot of sales to make a good profit.
The upside, though, is that it's not as difficult to combine sprinkle mixes as it is to hand-model a gumpaste cake topper!
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This is something that you would have to figure out based on the wholesale cost of each component, plus the shipping that you paid for the ingredients of the mix.
If you have to look around and find different sources, do that, because you need to have a very clear idea of what your costs are.
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You can check prices on Amazon for bulk sprinkles using my affiliate link here: Bulk sprinkles. You can also get wholesale sprinkles from companies like Bakell.comor Webstaurant Store.
Some sprinkles companies sell bulk, but the pricing isn't as low as wholesale. That could make it difficult to make much of a profit.
Jars will add a fairly high cost to the product price because of the cost of the jar, plus the need to send them in larger boxes with more padding.
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In my experience, plastic will be best if you're shipping things because the weight is lower and that will drop your shipping costs.
A good source of plastic bottles is Uline, but there are a lot of other businesses that sell packaging, so shop around.
Uline also has food-grade plastic bags that I used to use when I sold sprinkles in my Etsy shop. These are the lightest option, so I chose them to keep shipping costs lower.
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On my Artisan Shopper blog, I wrote an article with packaging sources that are used by members of my EShop Success program. Click here for that article: Shipping Supplies for Etsy
Get my Cake Pricing Guide to help you understand what goes into pricing edibles if you don't have any idea where to start!
Before you decide whether starting a sprinkle business is a good option, figure out what the approximate cost for one unit would be.
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What you should try to do is find some sprinkles that can be combined in different ways to create a mix that's not available already. You should also check to see what the average price is based on the weight of the sprinkles that people have listed, plus what they're charging for shipping.
If your costs are a lot higher than what the majority of people are selling things for, you should check to see if you can adjust.
Either find a cheaper supply source, drop the cost of your packaging, or just charge a higher price. If your mix is different enough people will still pay for it.
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I have one mix of ladybugs and bees with flowers, and I get a lot of requests for just the ladybugs or just the bees.
Since I have them packed and ready to go I can't substitute items, but if you don't pack them ahead of time you can offer them in different combinations.
These are light and can be shipped without worrying about a lot of damage, so it isn't really necessary to pack them the same way you would for something more fragile.
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For the lay-ons you may want to package them flat in order to avoid damage if they knock into each other in transit.
Using tissue paper to prevent any movement in the package works well to avoid unnecessary shifting as the package moves through the mail.
Want to open a new Etsy shop? Use this link to get 40 free listings: 40 free listings for new shopsHOUSTON, Oct. 8, 2019 – By day, Elizabeth Butts was the definition of a successful businesswoman, putting her finance degree to work as treasury manager for an oil company. Nights and weekends, she was slipping deeper into a world celebrated by Pinterest, Instagram, trade shows and other places haunted by creative bakers and culinary artists.
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And in January 2018, she went for broke, quitting her job to focus full time on Sprinkle Pop, the custom sprinkles business she had launched from her kitchen in Katy just 10 months earlier.
Butts is still the definition of a successful businesswoman, just one whose days are filled with custom colors, sweet treats and international sales. Sprinkle Pop, it seems, has become a star in the world of custom baking.
Back before she ever thought about custom sprinkle mixes, Butts entered the cake world almost by accident. A boyfriend’s brother was having a birthday, and she made a cake, topping it with fresh strawberries.
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Flash forward to January 2017. She had earned a finance degree from the University of Houston C.T. Bauer College of Business in 2009, married fellow alum Sean Piper – they met at Frontier Fiesta when Piper, who had graduated several years earlier, joined his former fraternity brothers at the campus party – and was settled into her business career. Baking cakes was a sideline, a creative outlet that introduced her to a thriving online community of cake decorators.
But as she worked on a cake for a baby shower that January, she couldn’t help feeling it was missing something. It needed sprinkles – after all, a baby shower is often known as a baby “sprinkle” – but she couldn’t find any in the party’s color theme.
By March 2017, she was in business selling those brightly colored pops of sugar, lending whimsy and adornment to sweet treats and earning $1, 000 that first month.
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King, a former home economics teacher, is co-owner with her husband, Jeff King, of the Great Texas Pecan Candy Co., with stores in Katy and Gruene. She knows sweets. And sprinkles.
She met Butts and Tisha Frank – a cake decorator from Cypress who became Sprinkle Pop’s first employee – at the Sugar Plum Market at the Stafford Center last year. King likes to shop local, and she liked the possibilities the Sprinkle Pop inventory offered for the dipped Oreos and dipped marshmallows she makes and sells.
To the uninitiated, “unique” would be an understatement. There are scores of mixes to choose from at any one time, from the Dia de los Muertos Sprinkle Mix, complete with tiny sugar skulls, to Dark Unicorn, Lavender Lullaby and Oh Snow Cute. Custom mixes make the combinations almost endless.
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And increasingly, there are sales. A lot of sales. The company is on track to surpass $1 million in lifetime sales this year.
“My long-term goal – even though I went to school in finance and was working in oil and gas – had been to do cake decorating as a business, ” Butts says. “And then Sprinkle Pop came up, and it just felt so right. It’s been crazy.”
E-commerce required a steep learning curve. “It means you have to be an expert in website design, sales and marketing, ” she says. Marketing, especially, has been an eye-opener as she has relied on both the old-fashioned kind via trade shows and advertising, and the modern marketing power of social media influencers.
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For the first six months or so after launching, the company earned about $1, 000 a month. Then, just in time for the 2017 holiday season, she hired a social media influencer to produce two videos.
The videos went viral. National Public Radio did a story, and celebrity cook Rachel Ray featured the bespoke sprinkles in her magazine. Butts and Piper were spending all day at their day jobs – he works in biotech sales – and another six hours or so making sprinkles, bottling, labeling and shipping.
By May of that year, the business was threatening to take over their house. Piper explains: “Our house consisted of a bedroom converted to a Sprinkle office, another bedroom converted to a sprinkle warehouse, overflow sprinkle storage in the dining room and manufacturing in the kitchen.”
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Butts started Sprinkle Pop in her home in Katy, but the company quickly outgrew the space. It now operates out of a warehouse just south of Loop 610. Photos courtesy of Elizabeth Butts.
Sprinkle Pop moved into a light and airy building just
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