With Mother’s day around the corner, the hunt for the perfect gift is on. The Sugar Garden, one of the rising players in the country’s culinary scene offers beautiful, delectable treats that are as beautiful as flowers and as yummy as chocolates.
It’s just as pretty, but ‘Oh so yummy’!
Their Cupcake Bouquet, for instance, combines aesthetics and culinary expertise — a perfect Mother’s Day gift that will surely make her smile on this special occasion. These delicate treats are part of The Sugar Garden’s Mother’s Day Menu, in addition to their other offerings and treats and customer favorites, which they sell all year long.
Cupcake Bouquet
Price: Php 2,050
A Brownie Bouquet
Price: PhP 2,050
Chocolate Rosettes
Price: Tub of 20 (PhP 250)
The Sugar Garden is owned by partners Tommy Tomelden, Louis Roberto Tuason, and Patricia Natividad-Han. Tommy handles the pastry decoration simultaneously with Louis’ baking, while Particia handles the business development aspect of things. Louis handles the business’ finances and administrative work as well.
“A little before the pandemic, around 2018, me and my partner— the one who does all the baking— decided, let’s start our own business. It wasn’t really anything too formal. It was more like we just wanna have money on the side. It is a very cute idea. Come pandemic, Patricia Natividad-Han came in for business development and we decided to zone in on the florals.”
Passion as the key ingredient
As a designer and creator, Tom is very particular about the products that The Sugar Garden offers to their customers.
“I really love works done by fantasy artists. I love the pastels, I love the brightness. I try to imagine how these flowers would translate to something I could possibly design,” shares Tommy. His design inspirations include Deb JJ Lee, James Jean, and Hayao Miyazaki. He also shares doing a lot of Pinterest, where he looks at various wedding bouquets.
Alternatively for more customized design, he starts his process by discussing what colors a client wants, stressing that colors are very important: “Sometimes, if you use wrong colors on certain flowers, it looks a little bit overwhelming.”
Creating an actual menu product takes around a month to perfect both the design and the taste. The Sugar Garden started off with cupcakes and cakes and eventually added their best selling chocolate rosettes.
“They’re super shiny and they have floral decorations as well. And then, we have our bars now and our mini chocolate roses,” Tommy shares.
Another best seller is The Sugar Garden’s Banana Cake and Banana Cupcake, both partnered with coffee buttercream.
“It’s really fulfilling to see people respond to your own art,” Tom shares. “We really work hard on testing our recipes. We want to use really high quality materials. Like if you talk about our triple chocolate roses, we use true belgian chocolate.”
This year, The Sugar Garden is planning to expand its business from online selling into a physical, face-to-face operation. They look forward to hopefully participating in bazaars and wedding fairs. Apart from ghis, they also plan to make dessert booths for birthday parties and other events.
Follow The Sugar Garden: on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thesugargardenph/, and on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesugargardenph.