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I have been decorating cakes my whole life and had a shop in Europe, selling speciality cakes.
Moving to the states and opening a shop here has taught me a lot about the American wedding and
American taste. Brides are asking for "fake" cakes to use for the day with a portion of real cake for the
taste sharing portion of the wedding. Seeing how my true love is to decorate cakes (real or fake),
Cake rental.com was BORN!!
I am also a teacher teaching others the love of cake decorating and I only employ the best!!! I have
been trained from Colette Peters in the art of fondant and gumpaste. I continue to take classes yearly
through the Wilton School of Cake Decorating. Your cake will be better than you can get from your
local bakery because of the hours put into your cake. There is now no time line, no rush to finish your
cake, no hurry before it goes bad, no worry of slipping and falling. Each cake is a piece of art and
each cake is seen over personally by me before it leaves my shop to ship to you. There are hours
and hours spent on your cake to make it YOUR DAY / YOUR WAY!!!
Moving to the states and opening a shop here has taught me a lot about the American wedding and
American taste. Brides are asking for "fake" cakes to use for the day with a portion of real cake for the
taste sharing portion of the wedding. Seeing how my true love is to decorate cakes (real or fake),
Cake rental.com was BORN!!
I am also a teacher teaching others the love of cake decorating and I only employ the best!!! I have
been trained from Colette Peters in the art of fondant and gumpaste. I continue to take classes yearly
through the Wilton School of Cake Decorating. Your cake will be better than you can get from your
local bakery because of the hours put into your cake. There is now no time line, no rush to finish your
cake, no hurry before it goes bad, no worry of slipping and falling. Each cake is a piece of art and
each cake is seen over personally by me before it leaves my shop to ship to you. There are hours
and hours spent on your cake to make it YOUR DAY / YOUR WAY!!!
| For full resolution, click on the picture. |
| Duff Goldman "Ace of Cakes" Rockin' Rockford, Illinois |
| Kimberly with Nicholas Lodge |
| Kimberly with Colette Peters |
GRAND RAPIDS PRESS ARTICLE
(this article was circulated worldwide)
Business offers chance to
rent fake wedding cake
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
By Cami Reister
The Grand Rapids Press
GRANDVILLE -- Wedding
to-do list:
Rent the hall -- check.
Rent the tuxes -- check.
Rent the cake -- check?
(this article was circulated worldwide)
Business offers chance to
rent fake wedding cake
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
By Cami Reister
The Grand Rapids Press
GRANDVILLE -- Wedding
to-do list:
Rent the hall -- check.
Rent the tuxes -- check.
Rent the cake -- check?
For economical elegance, rent a fake cake
Kimberly Aya, owner of Fun Cakes, in Grandville, shows samples of cakes
she has
made. The rental cakes are made of plastic foam except for a small insertion
of real
cake. The charge is $100.
Kimberly Aya, owner of Fun Cakes, in Grandville, shows samples of cakes
she has
made. The rental cakes are made of plastic foam except for a small insertion
of real
cake. The charge is $100.
The rest of the article (courtesy of GR Press)
That's right, a new Grandville business allows couples to rent decorated Styrofoam wedding cakes for less than half the cost of the
same cake made from scratch.
"They're covered in exactly what a real cake would be covered in -- fondant and gum paste," said Kimberly Aya, owner of Fun Cakes,
2880 Remico St. SW. "The only difference is the inside. Nobody can tell."
Aya, 50, fully intended to bake and decorate beautiful cakes for her Fun Cakes customers, and she still offers that service. But brides
kept looking for ways to save money.
"They kept asking for the fake cakes," Aya said. "I had never heard of the idea."
Fake cakes are not new, but renting them out is fairly novel.
Susan Lobsinger and her partner opened Rent the Cake of Your Dreams in East Aurora, N.Y., last year. She said she knows of only
one other cake rental business -- in Canada.
But the trend is emerging.
"We're growing all the time, and people are recommending us," Lobsinger said.
Mary Brown, manager of Cakes Plus on Plainfield Avenue NE, said they have rented out their window displays a few times when
brides were desperate and needed something at the last minute.
"It was happenstance. It's not something that we do," she said. "But I don't see why not. It probably would be good business.
"I'll be interested to see how it goes."
Aya did her research and launched cakerental.com in March. Working in fondant and gum paste as opposed to traditional frosting
makes the cakes durable and reusable, she said.
"That frosting will last forever," she said. "I keep them all covered up in plastic bags to keep them all dust free."
For Grand Rapids bride-to-be Nicole Kreuger, 26, it was the perfect solution.
She ran into Aya at a bridal show. "I had told her we had wanted to do a small cake, inexpensive but creative, with sheet cakes in the
back," said Kreuger, a graphic designer who will wed Rudy Fleminger in September.
"She told me about this idea to do fake cakes, and I thought it was brilliant. ... I could have the cake of my dreams and still stay in my
price range."
Kreuger said using a cake from Aya, paired with inexpensive sheet cakes,, she will spend about half what she would have spent on a
full-sized real cake.
"That's saving us a ton of money," she said.
Mary Brown of Cakes Plus says an a typical three-tier cake serving around 100 guests costs an average $200 to $250. Sheet cakes
cost far less.
Another bride getting married this fall also was pleased with the price.
Aya charges $100 to rent a fake cake in stock, or $150 for a custom design.
"I was going to do something really simple and small until I found this," said another bride-to-be Erin, who asked her last name not
be used to guard her secret.
"I'm going to try to go a little incognito on the fake cake until afterward."
So, what about the cake-cutting ceremony?
Aya has a secret spot on the cake reserved for one real slice of cake for the bride and groom. It is slipped into place, at the base layer
and under the fondant sugar paste frosting.
"So they can cut that at the ceremony and feed each other wedding cake," she said.
And normally, the cake then is wheeled to the kitchen to have it cut and served. So guests don't need to know the rest of the cake was
fake.
Jennifer Lee, a wedding consultant in Rockford, said it is a great option for some brides.
"A lot of times people do not need a huge cake, but they want the impact of a large cake, so this is a nice way of doing that," she said.
"Once the guests all figure it out, I'm sure it will lose its appeal a little bit. But I hope it doesn't."
GR Press Follow-up article:
Fake cake business spurs real media circus
Thursday, July 05, 2007
By Cami Reister
The Grand Rapids Press
GRANDVILLE -- Kimberly Aya didn't know her novel business would strike a chord with media worldwide.
Three days after a front page story in The Press was picked by wire services and distributed around the globe, Aya was inundated with
media inquiries and e-mails from interested brides.
The story ran June 6, detailing how she covers Styrofoam cake forms in fondant and gum paste frosting, with a spot in the base for
real cake for the cutting ceremony
"When I came home on Saturday, my e-mail was just full," she said. "I had them from Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Idaho, Washington,
and it hasn't slowed down one bit.
"I had to get a new phone. My old phones couldn't keep up with all that was happening. I kept running out the battery by 2 p.m."
Aya, 50, estimates she has done more than 30 live radio interviews and spoken to dozens of publications, including in France and
Australia. A Google search of her name finds her story in several countries and nearly every state in the union.
"I was on the BBC in London with a live interview, and I've been on the radio in Australia three times and now I'm going to be in the
Australian Reader's Digest,"
She even was interviewed by a supermarket tabloid, the National Examiner.
"There weren't cakes coming out of my ears or anything, so that was good," she joked.
The "Today" show on NBC plans to air a segment on her business during its 8 a.m. hour, only after winning a turf war with producers
from the show's 9 a.m. hour, Aya said.
"Originally I was booked with the 9 o'clock hour to go live, but the 8 o'clock hour heard about it and said this is more news," she said.
"They fought back and forth, and the 8 o'clock hour won out."
On the business end, Aya said her orders have more than tripled, and she is in active communication with more brides. She is being
wooed by wedding shows across the country and has received more than 20 requests to franchise her business, an idea she is
pursuing.
Send e-mail to the author: creister@grpress.com
(copyright (C) 2007 GR Press)
That's right, a new Grandville business allows couples to rent decorated Styrofoam wedding cakes for less than half the cost of the
same cake made from scratch.
"They're covered in exactly what a real cake would be covered in -- fondant and gum paste," said Kimberly Aya, owner of Fun Cakes,
2880 Remico St. SW. "The only difference is the inside. Nobody can tell."
Aya, 50, fully intended to bake and decorate beautiful cakes for her Fun Cakes customers, and she still offers that service. But brides
kept looking for ways to save money.
"They kept asking for the fake cakes," Aya said. "I had never heard of the idea."
Fake cakes are not new, but renting them out is fairly novel.
Susan Lobsinger and her partner opened Rent the Cake of Your Dreams in East Aurora, N.Y., last year. She said she knows of only
one other cake rental business -- in Canada.
But the trend is emerging.
"We're growing all the time, and people are recommending us," Lobsinger said.
Mary Brown, manager of Cakes Plus on Plainfield Avenue NE, said they have rented out their window displays a few times when
brides were desperate and needed something at the last minute.
"It was happenstance. It's not something that we do," she said. "But I don't see why not. It probably would be good business.
"I'll be interested to see how it goes."
Aya did her research and launched cakerental.com in March. Working in fondant and gum paste as opposed to traditional frosting
makes the cakes durable and reusable, she said.
"That frosting will last forever," she said. "I keep them all covered up in plastic bags to keep them all dust free."
For Grand Rapids bride-to-be Nicole Kreuger, 26, it was the perfect solution.
She ran into Aya at a bridal show. "I had told her we had wanted to do a small cake, inexpensive but creative, with sheet cakes in the
back," said Kreuger, a graphic designer who will wed Rudy Fleminger in September.
"She told me about this idea to do fake cakes, and I thought it was brilliant. ... I could have the cake of my dreams and still stay in my
price range."
Kreuger said using a cake from Aya, paired with inexpensive sheet cakes,, she will spend about half what she would have spent on a
full-sized real cake.
"That's saving us a ton of money," she said.
Mary Brown of Cakes Plus says an a typical three-tier cake serving around 100 guests costs an average $200 to $250. Sheet cakes
cost far less.
Another bride getting married this fall also was pleased with the price.
Aya charges $100 to rent a fake cake in stock, or $150 for a custom design.
"I was going to do something really simple and small until I found this," said another bride-to-be Erin, who asked her last name not
be used to guard her secret.
"I'm going to try to go a little incognito on the fake cake until afterward."
So, what about the cake-cutting ceremony?
Aya has a secret spot on the cake reserved for one real slice of cake for the bride and groom. It is slipped into place, at the base layer
and under the fondant sugar paste frosting.
"So they can cut that at the ceremony and feed each other wedding cake," she said.
And normally, the cake then is wheeled to the kitchen to have it cut and served. So guests don't need to know the rest of the cake was
fake.
Jennifer Lee, a wedding consultant in Rockford, said it is a great option for some brides.
"A lot of times people do not need a huge cake, but they want the impact of a large cake, so this is a nice way of doing that," she said.
"Once the guests all figure it out, I'm sure it will lose its appeal a little bit. But I hope it doesn't."
GR Press Follow-up article:
Fake cake business spurs real media circus
Thursday, July 05, 2007
By Cami Reister
The Grand Rapids Press
GRANDVILLE -- Kimberly Aya didn't know her novel business would strike a chord with media worldwide.
Three days after a front page story in The Press was picked by wire services and distributed around the globe, Aya was inundated with
media inquiries and e-mails from interested brides.
The story ran June 6, detailing how she covers Styrofoam cake forms in fondant and gum paste frosting, with a spot in the base for
real cake for the cutting ceremony
"When I came home on Saturday, my e-mail was just full," she said. "I had them from Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Idaho, Washington,
and it hasn't slowed down one bit.
"I had to get a new phone. My old phones couldn't keep up with all that was happening. I kept running out the battery by 2 p.m."
Aya, 50, estimates she has done more than 30 live radio interviews and spoken to dozens of publications, including in France and
Australia. A Google search of her name finds her story in several countries and nearly every state in the union.
"I was on the BBC in London with a live interview, and I've been on the radio in Australia three times and now I'm going to be in the
Australian Reader's Digest,"
She even was interviewed by a supermarket tabloid, the National Examiner.
"There weren't cakes coming out of my ears or anything, so that was good," she joked.
The "Today" show on NBC plans to air a segment on her business during its 8 a.m. hour, only after winning a turf war with producers
from the show's 9 a.m. hour, Aya said.
"Originally I was booked with the 9 o'clock hour to go live, but the 8 o'clock hour heard about it and said this is more news," she said.
"They fought back and forth, and the 8 o'clock hour won out."
On the business end, Aya said her orders have more than tripled, and she is in active communication with more brides. She is being
wooed by wedding shows across the country and has received more than 20 requests to franchise her business, an idea she is
pursuing.
Send e-mail to the author: creister@grpress.com
(copyright (C) 2007 GR Press)
| For additional information about us please click on In The Media button on the menu |
| SECCHIA Institute of Culinary Education Instructor |
| Kimberly as Wilton Instructor |
FunCakes Rental Headquarters is
located at 4520 Spartan Ind. Dr. in
Grandville, Michigan. It is 2200 sq. ft. of
office space along with a 1000 sq. ft. cake
decorating room. In back we have 27,000
sq. ft. of warehouse with a 1000 sq. ft.
work shop.
located at 4520 Spartan Ind. Dr. in
Grandville, Michigan. It is 2200 sq. ft. of
office space along with a 1000 sq. ft. cake
decorating room. In back we have 27,000
sq. ft. of warehouse with a 1000 sq. ft.
work shop.
| Fun Cakes Rental 4520 Spartan Ind. Dr. Grandville, MI 49418 (Grand Rapids) 616-510-8511 myday@cakerental.com Copyright ©2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 All Rights Reserved |
| ICES 34th Convention |
| Mike McCurry's Seminar |
 |
| Duff Goldman "Ace of Cakes" Book Signing Grand Rapids, Michigan |
| Buddy Valastro of "Cake Boss" at RBA show |
| Martha Stewart Book Signing Event (we supplied the centerpiece decoration cakes for the luncheon) |