Candy Buffet on a $50 Budget

I decided to create a rainbow candy buffet for an upcoming midsummer party. Despite being called crazy by a few friends, creating a candy buffet was fun. One friend actually understood my silly obsession with this project. As she said,"You have a goal, a timeline and a budget - its like being back at work!" The things a stay-at-home Mom will do to keep her mind active...

You can buy everything you need at Party City in the Wedding Section, but costs add up quickly. Candy runs about $6.00 for a ½ pound bag. Containers start at $3.00 and go up to $20.00. To my amazement you can even hire a Candy Caterer to create a buffet for you. I have a self-imposed budget of $50.00. That seems like a lot for candy. However, I'm considering it my main  decoration and as well as the party food.  I hope that there will be some left for favors for the kids.  

There are great candies online, but since you pay by weight, shipping can easily add 50% to your candy total. I realized that online candy costs about $15-$20/pound when you add shipping. Online sites recommend at least ½ pound of candy per person! I guess that’s if you’re not serving them anything else. We had 24 guests, but I just couldn’t imagine buying 12 pounds of candy at those prices ($180.00 - $240.00).

 

I bought most of the candy at the Dollar Store. I even got some cute glass containers there. I also scrounged the grocery store, WalMart and Target for the colors I needed. Our local Target has a good selection of bulk candy including jellybeans sorted by color, at $6.00/pound. I combined individually wrapped items like lollipops and with unwrapped candies like gummies, candy corn, gumballs etc.

I needed the six colors of the rainbow for my buffet. I didn’t realize that blue and green candies would be hard to find.  I had to buy light blue Sixlets (chocolates) at Party City at $5.99 for an 8 ounce bag. The green came from Mint 3 Musketeer minis.  If I do this again I will pick a single color as my theme. The are a lot of red candies (Twizzlers, Clark bars, Fireballs, etc.) or orange (Reeses Peanut butter cups, Orange Slices, Candy Corn, etc.) You can keep candy for 6 months so you can stock up during a holiday if you plan ahead.

The next trick was finding the right size container to fit the various candies without the containers looking empty. I discovered that if you chose large containers you’ll have to buy A LOT of candy. For a visual reference a typical 8 ounce glass holds a 1/2 pound of most candies. Since mine was a small buffet I was able to use kitchen glasses, bowls, martini glasses and clean vases & votive candle holders.

Most sites recommend that you use clear containers so guests can see the candy. That’s great if you have a lot of money to spend on the candy. I didn’t so I got much of my color from the actual containers, as you can see. I used a mix of glass and plastic containers.

Being compulsive about this stuff, I did a trial run before the party - okay, two test runs. I filled the containers & played around with the arrangement. I realized that because it was a small buffet I needed to add height to create impact. I made a lollipop display by pushing the sticks into floral foam in a vase. I covered the foam with the paper crinkles used in gift baskets. I stuffed a clear vase with colored tissue. I stuck books under the table cloth to raise some of the containers.

You can also use anything for color accents.  You could use stuffed animals or toys for a kids’ party. For a SpongeBob party you could go with all yellow candies and scatter toys on the table.

Next I had to address the question of what guests should put the candy in. I had twelve roughly 8 ounce containers of candy. If I gave each guest a 6 ounce plastic wine glass, I wouldn't have enough for everyone. I had to add some inexpensive bulk items like Tootsie Pops, gumballs and pixie sticks (added another $4 to the total). I set out spoons and a gravy ladle to scoop unwrapped candies. I picked up small white wedding favor boxes to use as goody bags for the kidsif there are any leftovers.

To continue the rainbow theme I used solid color paper lanterns from Target that I already had on hand for decorations. My grand total came in just over $40.  That's about $1.70 per person. Not bad ~ especially since I had so much fun putting it together. Compared to the last party we had where I ordered 6 pizzas at $15 each it was really a good deal.  Now, if only the other Moms don't kill me for sending their kids home on a sugar high!