Toronto Wedding Vendor Feature: Desmond & Beatrice

While running errands in September, I passed by Desmond&Beatrice a couple times and promised myself to stop by one day. Kevin and I finally got a chance to give them a visit before a meeting one Sunday and we both fell in love with their store and cupcakes! I checked out their website and was surprised to find them as an active blogger so I fired up an email asking Amanda if it’s possible to meet and chat. Earlier in October, we got a chance to sit and chat about everything weddings and cupcakes with Amanda and Tanya, their sales manager. We took some pictures and arranged to blog our conversation to further educate the industry and the market of what they do.

Why Desmond & Beatrice? How did you become a baker?
Amanda (A): Desmond and Beatrice are my grandparents’ names. And that is what we named the store after. We started it as a fun thing to do so we created a website and sold from there. The biggest part of our business is wholesale so we supply a bunch of coffee shops and bakeries around the city daily. But the cupcake part and the retail part of the business are fairly new to us and we are still growing. And wedding is the big part of our business now.

In events and weddings, do you do cakes as well on top of cupcakes?
A: We don’t offer cakes but we do dessert tables. Our whole approach is to go back to basic and proper baking. So what we do is cookies, bars and squares and we do them in fortune sizes.

Is there any limit of how many weddings you take in a weekend?
A: It depends on the requirement from the bride. We do offer delivery service so if there is a pick up option, we don’t really restrict.

How do you approach a wedding and the needs for the cupcakes designs? What are the steps in ordering for a wedding?
T: We are not into all those bells and whistles all the time, we want cupcakes that taste delicious. If there is a standard or request, we do tweak it accordingly to them. but we start from meeting with the bride and go over the products that we do have , see their requirements, explain the various options that we can provide to them and go from there.
A: We don’t offer fondant for our cupcakes. Like Tanya mentioned, we are all about taste here and to us, fondant doesn’t taste very good. We offer traditional American Style Buttercream Cupcakes. Also, our products look pretty on itself so we don’t really add embellishment to it unless the bride provides us with the topper.

Do you have a suggested timeframe or steps for brides to order from D&B?
T: We had brides contacted us a year before that we had built up and worked with. Although we had some who didn’t and we accommodated them as long as we have the time and room which is up to 48 hours before.
A: We even just had a bride who called us on Wednesday this week for this Saturday. We don’t say no when we can do it.

Do you notice any trend or style in the wedding this year?
A: The dessert table is a really popular trend right now. We don’t offer the service of going and setting up the dessert table. We often found that we got to the venue and the table was not ready or something was not there and we were restricted to it. But we still offer the delivery service and we often work with brides to coordinate their vision. Just recently, we did a dessert table for a wedding out of town and it was designed as a country style wedding. It looked so amazing with the different types of doily and cake stand. We also have different platters to rent out to coordinate with the vision of the wedding. Trend is pretty stable and there is nothing particular and we offer such a wide variety of flavors for brides to choose from.

Do you have suggestion of flavors for brides?
T: We always suggest 3-4 flavors to choose from. We will accommodate if they have requests. 3-4 flavors look best on photography and it eliminates waste as in the case guests would like to try each and every flavor.

What is your favorite cupcake flavor?
A: Oh God, we are around them so much.
T: I would say Earl Grey.
A: I don’t know, Chocolate Cheesecake is really good too. A combination of chocolate and cheesecake cream cheese on top. Caramel Toffee is also awesome.
T: We do offer seasonal flavors for summer weddings. If I have to choose, I will take strawberry. We use fresh strawberries. All of our fruit flavors use fresh fruit to incorporate in them so we got that real flavor with no artificial.
A: We don’t tend to freeze ingredients. Everything is natural and (the taste) comes from the ingredients. The only thing we add on to the colouring is mint so that it looks greener but other than that, everything else is all natural and fresh. We don’t incorporate shortenings and use real butter.
T: You cant go wrong with any flavor you choose and I think it is reflected from our own staff as they have their own favorite flavor. You cant go wrong from anything that you choose. What I also noticed as couples came in into our store, one of them usually had a very distinct flavor choice. And we are always able to incorporate and offer different choices of flavor in the dessert table as their likings.

Thanks Amanda and Tanya for such a great conversation! If you haven’t already, visit them on Facebook and like their page to receive updates. And if you are in the area, be sure to stop by and try out their super delicious cupcakes! Brides-to-be, here is Tanya who will be in touch with you for the needs of sweets in your wedding:

Happy Friday!

Jenn and Kevin

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