The Best Foods for Your Business To Buy in Bulk

To establish a successful food business, it is imperative that company owners are flexible and prepared at all times. Changes in demand, customer cravings, and economic fluctuations affect the success level of restaurants, cafés, and bakeries. However, when one of the worst mistakes a food business can make is running low on inventory.

When you run low on supplies, your customers, staff, and business are all affected. Not every ingredient should be bought in bulk, though. Learn more about the best foods for your business to buy in bulk here.

Pasta and Grains

The key to choosing the best foods to buy in bulk is to evaluate their shelf life. The longer of a shelf life food has, the safer of a bulk investment it is. Some of the safest and wisest foods to buy in bulk are grains and pasta. 

Bags of noodles, rice, and other grains can sit in inventory boxes far longer than fruit or vegetables. So if you’re opening a restaurant or café, consider adding past and grains to the top of your bulk-buying list.

Dairy

Unlike pasta and grains, dairy comes with a much shorter shelf life. However, the demand for this product far outweighs its shelf-life limitations. Cafés and restaurants run through gallons of milk quickly between coffee beverages and milk-inclusive recipes.

Other dairy products such as cheese, yogurt, and eggs are also staples to most food establishments. Running out of these supplies can quickly cause menu disasters. Don’t overlook the dairy items on your menu. Instead, buy these products in bulk.

Nuts

Nuts are one of the most dependable food items to buy in bulk. When you invest in wholesale dried goods, you ensure your business has plenty of versatile ingredients to work with. Nuts are the perfect snacks to offer customers, or these foods can add the perfect balance of flavor to classic recipes.

Not only are nuts versatile, but they also have a longer shelf life. Including dried goods in your wholesale bulk order ensures your business is prepared and fully stocked with your menu essentials.

Honey

Did you know that when raw honey is stored properly, it doesn’t have an expiration date? Many people assume honey isn’t edible when it crystallizes. However, inedible crystalized honey is a myth. Honey crystallization happens due to glucose and fructose hardening over time. Stirring honey breaks the crystals. 

Don’t compromise the satisfaction of your customers by running low on inventory supplies. Instead, look over this list of the best foods for your business to buy in bulk and make sure your business is prepared.

To find a wholesale supplier for honey, dried goods, or other organic and delicious ingredients, contact our team at GloryBee to learn more.

The Best Flavor Add-Ins To Include in Your Café

Cafés are one of the most challenging food and beverage businesses to operate successfully. These stores require tons of management in terms of inventory, employment, and service, and there are countless competitors in this industry. When so many other cafés exist, how do you persuade customers to choose your store rather than others?

One of the best ways to give your store the edge it needs is by adding more delicious and inclusive items to your menu. Check out some of the best flavor add-ins to include in your café menu below.

Raw Honey

Want to create a unique menu for your customers? If so, including honey as an alternative sweetener in your café menu will be an excellent first step to take. While honey is technically higher in calories than table sugar, this syrup has a lower glycemic index. As a result, honey is an excellent and delicious alternative sweetener for those looking to keep their blood sugar lower.

Raw honey is beneficial for its sweetening abilities, and it has many flavors to choose from. With so many different floral and sweet honey varieties to order, your café could have one of the most unique menus on the block. Consider investing in raw honey as a primary wholesale baking ingredient for your business. 

Mint

As an intensely refreshing and delicious flavor add-in, mint is an ideal addition to any hot or cold beverage. This minor ingredient is perfect for holiday or seasonal beverages and can help enhance more subtle flavors in your coffee and tea drinks. Consider investing in mint to add this potent ingredient to your café menu.

Coconut Milk

Oat milk, almond milk, soy milk, and other dairy alternatives have been continuously popular for customers in cafés across the country. However, while most cafés and restaurants already offer these alternatives, fewer food and beverage establishments include coconut milk as an option.

Coconut milk contains a rich and saccharine flavor that improves the sweetness of both tea and beverage drinks without being overwhelming. This flavor add-in is perfect for customers searching for a low-calorie flavor option.

This selection of the best flavor add-ins to include in your café is the perfect place to start brainstorming which ingredients will distinguish your business. Consider how these ingredients can improve and impact your established recipes and discover how to reach a wider audience with these delicious flavor enhancements.

Beginner Baking Tips Everyone Should Know

Any talented baker knows that creating delicious and mouth-watering recipes takes much more than an ability to read the back-of-the-box instructions. True bakers know that to make successful baked goods, they must have time and patience.

Are you expanding your baking skills? Do you want to open a successful restaurant, café, or bakery? If so, check out these beginner baking tips everyone should know before you get started.

Don’t Skimp on Quality Baking Ingredients

When baking at home, you may sometimes replace an item in your baking directions with another similar ingredient. However, when you bake goods for customers, you cannot commit this mistake. It’s essential to invest in high-quality whole baking ingredients to establish a successful food business.

Low-quality or less expensive ingredient substitutes will significantly impact the quality and safety of your recipes. Do not serve your customers products with low-grade ingredients. Instead, speak with a trusted wholesale baking ingredients distributor to set your business up for success.

Don’t Rush the Process

Baking is by no means a race. In fact, baking requires a lot of waiting, something that business owners despise doing. Achieving the perfect recipes for delicious baked goods is no fast feat, between prep, preheating, and baking time. So before you start baking, keep in mind that time will be an essential element to monitor.

Storage Matters

Even if you’re setting up shop at home, do not underestimate how crucial proper ingredient storage is for baking. Finding the correct temperature settings and environment to store each of your ingredients in is vital. When restaurants, cafés, and bakeries do not consider these factors, their baked goods do not sustain their best quality.

The more time and patience you put into your food’s storage, the better quality and taste your baked goods will have.

Remember To Measure

Unlike cooking, baking is a calculated and precise art form. When baking, one of the most important things to pay attention to is measurement. You should carefully measure every ingredient you use on a scale to ensure that the final flavor is perfect.

Don’t make the mistake of eyeballing the liquids or flour you include in a recipe. Instead, invest in a quality measuring scale and create a more consistently delicious product for customers.

These are the top beginner baking tips everyone should know before starting a food business.

Do you need to contact a trusted wholesale baking and cooking distributor? Explore our GloryBee website to learn more about our products and bulk deals.

Sesame Honey Vinaigrette

This simple vinaigrette is great with cabbage for Asian slaw! Or use on any green salad, pour over steamed veggies, or toss with soba noodles. If you want some extra kick, add a pinch of cayenne pepper or a few drops of hot chili oil.

sesame seeds with honey on tableIngredients

½ cup sesame oil (toasted or plain)
¼ cup rice vinegar
2 Tbsp honey
2 Tbsp soy sauce
2 Tbsp toasted sesame seeds


Directions

Place all ingredients in a small jar and shake to mix.

To toast sesame seeds: Place on a pan in your toaster oven at 250° for five to six minutes, shaking occasionally. Or place in sauté pan over low heat for five to six minutes. Toss a couple times by shaking pan back and forth.

Upcycled Gifts For Beekeepers to Make

If you’re a beekeeper, you just may be sitting on a gold mine of supplies you can use to make your own sustainable and upcycled holiday gifts!

Hive components as rustic décor:

A pre-wired honey frame can make a perfect rustic photo display:

  • Clean thoroughly
  • Paint with acrylic paint if you like
  • Use wooden clothespins to hang photos from the wires
  • (If you like this idea, but don’t have the frame, don’t worry! We’ve got you covered)

An old hive box can make a great storage box or planter:

  • Nail the bottom securely to the box and turn upside down.
  • For a decorative storage box, you can add a lid (maybe even add hinges if you’re feeling fancy!).
  • Paint it if you like!
  • Want a fresh clean box, bottom and lid? We’ve got them!

Honey Jar Vase:

After you’ve enjoyed a jar of delicious honey, clean it thoroughly—and then it’s your blank canvas for decorating! You can decoupage it, wrap it with twine, paint it, tie a festive ribbon around it, or whatever else you dream up! Wouldn’t it be cute to decoupage a honey jar with Christmas wrap and fill it with sprigs of greenery?

Beeswax Candles:

If you would like to make candles and other crafts with wax from your own hive, but you’re not sure how to transform the messy, honey-covered wax you have into something usable, we’ve got you covered there too! How to render beeswax from your hives

September Is Palm Done Right Month

At GloryBee, we are proud to partner with Palm Done Right® to bring our customers the highest quality, ethically, and sustainably sourced palm oil. The month of September is Palm Done Right month, so it's a great time to spotlight our Organic Red Palm Oil!   

GloryBee's Organic Red Palm Oil is unprocessed, non-hydrogenated cooking oil, cold-pressed from the fruit of the oil palm.  It is made up of approximately 50% saturated fat, which is considerably less than palm kernel oil, 40% unsaturated fat, and 10% polyunsaturated fat. It contains about 50% of medium-chain fatty acids.  

Our red palm oil is sourced from Ecuador within a Farmer to Fork supply chain under the Palm Done Right™ organization.  Palm Done Right™ allows us to verify sustainability, collection, production, and processing to meet organic standards as well as to guarantee that no rain forests or animal habitats are harmed during farming or harvest.  To learn more about Palm Done Right™, go to palmdoneright.com.  

What is Palm Done Right®?  

Palm Done Right is the sustainable palm oil solution. It is a movement to prove that palm oil can be grown for good and to show that when "done right," Palm oil can bring significant positive impact to the world. Palm Done Right® brings together manufacturers, retailers, and consumers to increase awareness of the social and environmental benefits of palm oil grown organically, with fair-trade practices, working with small farms, and the ethical treatment of farm and plantation workers. It is the highest possible standard for palm oil and goes above and beyond any other certification program.   

Hair For a Cause

GloryBee Sales Coordinator Adam Bertrand, cut his hair and donated his long locks to Wigs for Kids on his birthday in July. His friends and supporters also helped him raise $1,500 for the nonprofit, which covers the cost of an entire wig. 

Check out www.wigsforkids.org to get involved! 

From the Wigs For Kids website: 

Our Mission: Helping Children Look Themselves and Live Their Lives! 

When Children lose their hair, they don’t just suffer physically. The change in their appearance can drastically undermine their self-image and sabotage their self-esteem. To help heal the pain of these struggles, Certified Cosmetic Therapist Jeffrey Paul founded Wigs for Kids, a nonprofit organization that has been serving children suffering from hair loss since 1981. 

SAVE the BEE Report Available

GloryBee’s Annual SAVE the BEE report is now available online. This report spans July 2019 through June 2020 and presents dollars raised, work accomplished by our five recipient organizations, and a list of our business partners.  

GloryBee was founded by beekeepers, and honey continues to be a significant part of our business. In working toward our vision of a healthy world where bees and people thrive, we launched the SAVE the BEE Initiative to raise awareness of the plight of honey bees. 

GloryBee has been contributing 1% of retail honey sales to SAVE the BEE since the start, and now in our 7th year we can count over 60 businesses that have partnered with us to promote awareness and raise funds.  

Between now and the end of the year, we will use this blog to report on the research and education efforts supported by SAVE the BEE, and also on some of our most creative and committed partners. 

Read the report here.

Pausing for Pollinators

Just before the pandemic closed down public life, GloryBee’s SAVE the BEE Initiative hosted two screenings of the award winning documentary film The Pollinators. Directed by beekeeper and cinematographer Peter Nelson, the film provides an unusual glimpse into the commercial migratory bee industry in the US, an industry that is “indispensable to the feeding of America.” 

As we watched tens of billions of bees being transported back and forth from one end of the country to the other, it became apparent how the migratory life of moving hives from one monoculture to the next is taking its toll on bees and beekeepers alike. 

When it comes to pollination, honey bees have become the heavy lifters in US agriculture. Without their services we would not have many of the nuts, fruits and vegetables we take for granted, in the volumes that we are accustomed to. (Think almonds, orchard fruits, avocados, broccoli, blueberries and cranberries to name a few.) It is the saddest of ironies, the fact that we are able to manage honey bees and move them around has allowed us to develop our current monoculture system, which in the end, is not serving the bees.  

Not that moving bees is inherently bad. Bees are often moved to protect them from harsh weather and to offer them nectar options when there is a dearth at home. And without the income from pollination services, most commercial beekeepers would not be able to make a living because commodity honey prices are at an all-time low. 

However, the pervasive use of pesticides and loss of foraging habitat associated with monoculture growing methods have impacted honey bee health and nutrition, which in turn, make them more susceptible to parasites and disease.  

The beekeepers, farmers, scientists and activists interviewed in The Pollinators all emphasize the importance of bees not only for the survival of agriculture but also as an indicator species. If we think of bees as a living, breathing gauge of the state of our environment – we are in the red zone. 

The answers are straight forward enough. We need to change the way we grow our food. Fewer monocultures and more crop diversity. Fewer pesticides and more thriving soils. More mowing and less tilling. And big farm or little farm, all can create hedgerows with more diverse floral resources for pollinators, be they native bees or honey bees.  

Regenerative agriculture is on the rise. We can support it by changing the way we eat. More local and fresh, less processed from afar. More organic and fewer GMOs. Greater vegetable diversity with more heirloom varieties and less of the same old hybrids.  

Give pause to reflect on what you eat, and what pollinators add to your world. And the next time you are looking for honey, pick the local jar, and pay a premium price for it. 

Pacific Northwest Raw Honey Shave Ice

Here’s a cool, summery treat with the delicious taste of local raw honey! 

Syrup Ingredients: 

  • ½– 1 cup warm water (not over 110 F, so that the benefits of raw honey are not reduced). 

To make the syrup: 

Place warm water and honey in a sealable container, like a mason jar with a lid. Shake vigorously to combine. For ease of dispensing, you may want to transfer to a squeeze bottle. Cool in fridge (so it won’t melt the ice!). You can also add food coloring if so desired.

To make the shave ice:  

Place approximately 1-2 ice cubes in a food processor, 2 cups at a time, until cubes stop making noise and the ice is lump-free and resembles snow. Alternatively, you can use a shave-ice machine. 

Immediately after processing ice, place in bowl, drizzle with honey syrup and enjoy! 

Serving ideas: 

  • Serve over a scoop of vanilla ice cream 
  • Sprinkle with coconut flakes 
  • Add a dash of sweetened condensed milk 

Factory Store Closure

We want to share the news with you that we have made the difficult decision to permanently close the GloryBee Factory Store on Saturday, June 27.

This decision was not made lightly. Our founders, Dick and Pat Turanski, first began selling to customers out of their family garage in 1975, and the Factory Store grew and evolved over the years to what it is today. The GloryBee Factory Store has been part of the company’s legacy and relationship with our community for more than 45 years. We have had an amazing run serving our community and local beekeepers via our brick-and-mortar store as it evolved, grew and even moved locations over the years.

As we celebrate this legacy, we also want to celebrate this as a positive change which allows us to continue to focus on our core business of supplying ingredients to food and beverage manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors, bakeries and retailers. As you may or may not know, you are probably already enjoying high-quality natural and organic ingredients in many of your favorite natural prepared foods and restaurant meals!

GloryBee and the Turanski family would like to say thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for your support and genuine relationship with us for so many years. We look forward to serving your needs with our local partners and online at glorybee.com.

Many of our retail honey and natural sweetener products can be found at local retailers.

Stay tuned for more information on will call order for wholesale customers, and local beekeeping partnerships.

Easy Honey Almond Chai

Place 4 chai tea bags into a standard-sized teapot. Pour boiling water over the tea bags, leaving enough room in the teapot to add 1 cup of almond milk. 

Add 1 cup of hot almond milk (heated for a couple of minutes in the microwave, or over the stovetop) to the teapot. Wrap in a towel or cover with a tea cozy. Let steep for 5 minutes. 

Remove tea bags and add honey. We recommend starting with a couple of tablespoons and adding more to taste.  

Here’s where it gets fun: you can adjust the flavor profile of your latte depending on the honey you choose. 

For a traditional, familiar honey flavor, try GloryBee Organic Clover Blossom Honey 

For a fresh, summery flavor, try GloryBee California Orange Blossom Honey 

For a strong, distinct flavor, try GloryBee Raw Buckwheat Blossom Honey 

For a spicy kick, try GloryBee Habanero Honey 

For a buttery treat, try GloryBee Honey Ghee 

Once you’ve sweetened the chai with your honey of choice, pour into mugs and enjoy!