We plan on giving the candy to the kids on the way OUT.

March 11, 2009 7:51 AM

Where can we buy bulk candy on the cheap?

Inspired by a wedding post on Maganda, we want to have a little candy shop as our wedding favors. Amazon has some decent deals on stuff like Haribo Gold Bears, but I'm hoping to find a better deal and more variety, as this may end up being a lot of candy. Are there suppliers who sell to candy stores that'll sell directly to a consumer? Online candy warehouse (dot com?)

Metafilter, help me find cheap (but still delicious!) candy in bulk!

ChatFilter Sub-question: What candies should we be sure to include? Relevant info: Wedding in Boston (no delicious, but hard-to-find regional candies, please!), our friends are mostly in their mid- to late-twenties, family members ranging from babies and children, to adults in their 30s-60s.

posted by explosion to shopping (23 comments total)

Oriental Trading does do decently priced (not wholesale, but pretty good) bulk candy for the consumer.
posted by Weighted Companion Cube at 8:05 AM on March 11 [1 favorite has favorites]

I used Metro Candy for my wedding. Shipping wasn't bad and the selection is great.

I love that this trend is catching on. Our candy buffet was super popular with our guests. Rock candy on a stick was the most popular treat, and we even had some at the coffee bar so that people could swirl them in their hot drinks.

Would an Irish theme work for your Boston wedding? Metro candy also has St. Paddy's day candy on sale.
posted by Alison at 8:12 AM on March 11

Make sure to include miniature boxes of Boston Baked Beans candy.
posted by Andy's Gross Wart at 8:14 AM on March 11

It's not a Boston-themed wedding, it's just where we live (well, Cambridge, actually). Theme-wise, "science" and "dinosaurs" might work, as we're having our wedding at the Museum of Science in May. Aside from the fabulous location though, our wedding doesn't really have a theme beyond "casual, fun & stylish."

Thanks for the answers so far, this is wonderful!
posted by explosion at 8:18 AM on March 11

You can order from some manufactuer's websites. Like Spangler Candy (they make dumdum suckers and circus peanuts). I have also ordered from Candydirect with great success -- I'm not sure how cheap they are, but they have a large selection.
posted by dpx.mfx at 8:29 AM on March 11

Sub-Answer: A co-worker did a candy buffet at her recent wedding. Her wedding colors were blue and white, and they used any candy that was blue or white, or had a blue, white, or silver wrapper. Some I can think of off the top of my head: blue and white Jelly Bellies, blue- and silver-wrapped Hershey's Kisses, blue- and silver-wrapped mini Hershey's bars (might've been special Easter wrapping, though the wedding was in August), blue and white rock candy.
posted by LolaGeek at 8:31 AM on March 11

Or make your own.
posted by Dragonness at 8:31 AM on March 11

I did this for my wedding, and went to Sam's Club and bought whatever caught my eye. I didn't want to go themey with the candy, I just what we loved. So we had hot tamales, m&ms, smarties, cherry sours, moon pies, ring pops, and other things that I can't remember because it was over 3 years ago. If you want to see pictures, let me know. I did have to order a few things that my husband particularly wanted, but I can't honestly remember where I got them from. There are so many places online that sell candy.

And three years on, people are still telling me how much they loved the candy bar. (I also had trays and trays of truffles set up on the cake table. Oh, so heavenly!)
posted by pyjammy at 8:52 AM on March 11

Trappistine Nun-made Caramel Squares are available in bulk/scale pricing. And OMFG heavens are they good.
posted by cowbellemoo at 9:12 AM on March 11

Economy Candy. They have a store in NYC if you get down this way. It's awesome.
posted by kimdog at 9:18 AM on March 11

You said (no delicious, but hard-to-find regional candies, please!) - well how about local regional candies?

The New England Confectionery Company (Neccos and others) has a company store in Revere, where you can probably get a deal on bulk items.

Then there's Harbor Sweets in Salem. They sell chocolates in bulk, but if you want to save more dough you can call to see if they sell factory seconds.
posted by SteveInMaine at 9:19 AM on March 11

After you get a sense of prices online, you might check out your locally owned candy shops; while candy-shopping for our wedding, I discovered that a local candy boutique (not in Boston, sorry!) sells a selection of candy in bulk. Their prices on some items are slightly higher than the online candy shops, but we're saving the shipping by picking it up in person. (And from browsing the bulk candy websites, I'd say the shipping cost, not the price per pound, is the real budget disaster.)

Note, also, that some online bulk-candy shops won't ship chocolate during the hot summer months, and those that will often specify that they cannot be held responsible for melted or misshapen candies. This makes me doubly glad we're buying in bulk from a local place, and I needn't worry about shipments melting on their way to me.

As for the ideal selection, I would just be sure we had a decent balance of sour to sweet, chewy to soft/smooth, fruity to chocolatey. A candy bar with nothing but sour chewies would overwhelm, but one with only chocolate, fudge, and nut-buttery fillings will cloy. Strike a balance.

And I'd be sure to seed the display with at least one nostalgia-inducing candy, ideally one that is more plaything than candy: , those wax bottles filled with syrupy drink, shoebutton candy, candy necklaces... Something to play with! We're having wax lips --- great childhood memory, great wedding photo op --- but whatever pulls your age cohort's nostalgia-string would be great. I think we'll also scatter packs of candy cigarettes around the smoking area. Shhhhhhh --- apparently the very idea of candy cigarettes has some people in an uproar.
posted by Elsa at 9:26 AM on March 11

Speaking of Necco, I see they also sell wedding hearts.
posted by SteveInMaine at 9:32 AM on March 11

Don't overestimate how much you need either. We brought home a shitload of black & white candy even though we had decent sized chinese take out boxes.

Some of our candy came from whole foods. Some came from Trader Joe's. Some came from Amazon. And some came from Metro, as mentioned before.

Congratulations! (And a wedding at a science museum? How awesome! So jealous.)
posted by santojulieta at 9:49 AM on March 11

A friend did this at her (very limited budget) wedding and got her candy at Sam's Club. They have a really great knock-off version of Jelly Bellys. Mmm, jelly beans.

She was originally going to do an all-white theme, but that was going to require some custom ordering, which got expensive. She ended up going the other direction by using all multicolored candies (like jelly beans, Skittles, M&Ms, etc.), then tying a wide white ribbon around each jar to dress it up. It was really pretty, in a nice casual way.

It was a HUGE hit, by the way -- she didn't have any leftovers (although there were quite a few kids attending).
posted by transporter accident amy at 9:59 AM on March 11

Wow! What great answers! I'll definitely have to sit down sometime outside of work and check out all of these links.

Sub-sub-question to those who've done this before: How much candy, in total, is right? Better to have too much than to run out, of course, and hard candies might last 5 months to Halloween, but I don't want to do it Ricky Ricardo style (pound a person, right?) and flood the kitchen with rice candy.

Also, am I right in assuming that hard candies, caramels, etc. will have the approximate density of water, and thus is approximately 8 pounds to the gallon (for jar sizing/filling purposes)?
posted by explosion at 10:10 AM on March 11

Here's your Candy Warehouse. I've not ordered from them myself but have read about them on Candyblog.
posted by jvilter at 10:39 AM on March 11

Also, am I right in assuming that hard candies, caramels, etc. will have the approximate density of water, and thus is approximately 8 pounds to the gallon (for jar sizing/filling purposes)?

From the Candy Warehouse FAQ:

Q: Just how much is 10 pounds of candy?

A: Candy piece size varies greatly, but generally speaking, 10 pounds of unwrapped candy is about the size of a shoe box. We recommend that you share your shoe box of candy with others. Don't hoard the candy all to yourself.... that would be very naughty.

Jeez... that volume estimate is unnervingly smaller than I expected. I'm planning to ask this question of my candy-shop owner, who will surely be able to give a decent weight-to-volume estimate for most candies she carries.

But I've also been eyeballing this by looking hard at economy-sized boxes and bags of candy whenever I see them on a grocery-store or drugstore shelf. I note the ounces/grams of the package and estimate how many pint glasses it would fill. That has helped me get a ballpark estimate of how many pounds of candy we'll need. (Note: we're not doing a full candy bar, just using jars of candy as centerpieces. Your candy needs will presumably be greater than that.)
posted by Elsa at 11:00 AM on March 11

We did a candy buffet for our wedding in August, and while it was an overwhelming success, it took a lot more work to plan than I first anticipated. Ours was all blue & white candy, much like the wedding described above.

I used ACandyStore.com as well as the Candy Warehouse site mentioned above. As others said, it wasn't the candy that was the problem with regards to price, it was the shipping. ACandyStore.com had way better shipping deals than Candy Warehouse--it was a flat $9.95 for any size order. I used them for everything I could. I got the best deals on blue Twizzlers, loads of salt water taffy, gummy bears, and rock candy.

I also found many of our candies in surprising places: Meijer (grocery store chain) for Blue Laffy Taffy candies, as well as yogurt covered pretzels and raisins. Dominick's (another grocery store chain) had the best deal on bulk Jelly Belly jelly beans in individual colors. Otherwise, I searched every bargain bin available during the months before the wedding, and clearance rack Easter candies were a good source. I got some fun kiddie candies at party supply stores (like Bubble Tape bubble gum in Blue, and Blue-Raspberry Ring Pops). Finally, I got some nice Lindt chocolate truffles at their outlet store, for a really good price. If you have one of those nearby, you can find some good deals there.

I had more candy than we needed, but it was worth it to me because I had a certain visual in mind. We had about a pound of candy per person. That 10 pound shoebox measurement is hardly useful: a 12 pound package of Twizzlers was twice that size. Same for 10 pounds of gummy candies. A 10 pound box of mints was about the shoebox size. But it would only take 3-5 pounds of chocolate to fill that much space.

Even though it was a lot of work, I think it was worth the trouble. Most of our guests had never seen anything like it, and I still get compliments on it every time anyone brings up the wedding.
posted by terilou at 12:00 PM on March 11

What I did was gather (mostly borrowed) glass containers and then was able to kind of figure out how much candy would fit in them. I put big things like moon pies and ring pops in the bigger containers, and smaller, more expensive things like m&ms in the smaller ones. You know a small bowl of m&ms is still a lot of m&ms, so don't go overboard.

Oh yeah, and don't forget the scoops! You can get them cheaply in packs of three at Bed Bath & Beyond.
posted by pyjammy at 1:03 PM on March 11

Here is what my candy buffet looked like when I set it all up a week before my wedding. I used medium and large sized jars from Ikea and used the ones that fit the amount of candy best.

We calculated how much we would need based on the size of the treat bag we used. We filled one up, weighed it, and multiplied by each guest. We had 175 people and we still had lots and lots of leftovers because not everyone, especially the older folks, took some.

Here is what we ordered and their weights so you can have an idea of how much fits into a jar:
6 lbs - CHOCOLATE ROCKS
200 count - ROCK CANDY DEMITASSE STIX WHITE
5 lbs - GOETZE VANILLA CARAMELS
5 lbs - TEENEE BEANEE JELLY BEANS GREEN APPLE
5 lbs - SOUR APPLE SLICES
7.5 lbs - SPEARMINT LEAVES

We had extras of almost everything except for the sour apple slices which didn't quite fill up their large jar. We added some sour patch kids to fill it up the rest of the way.

We placed two orders a few weeks apart so we could experiment with and weigh the first batch. The chocolate rocks were my favorite. They looked like real pebbles, but tasted like high-end M&Ms. We also supplemented with cookies baked by family members. They occupied the two middle jars in our set-up.
posted by Alison at 1:58 PM on March 11

Arg...I forgot to link the picture of the candy buffet jars.
posted by Alison at 1:59 PM on March 11

Thank you all so much! What a wealth of information!
posted by explosion at 8:50 AM on March 12