Café owners, hotel F&B managers, and restaurant buyers ask us a lot of the same questions before they place a first wholesale order. Here are the honest answers, from the people who bake them.
About Curious Cat Bakery
What is Curious Cat Bakery? Curious Cat Bakery is a wholesale bakery based in St. Petersburg, Florida, specializing in croissants. We supply coffee shops, cafés, restaurants, and hotels across the Tampa Bay area and into Orlando so they get local, scratch-made quality without having to do it themselves.
Are your croissants vegan? Yes. They're made without eggs, dairy, or soy but taste like a traditional butter croissant — that's the point. We were named one of the top 5 places for vegan croissants in the US by VegNews and yet most coffee shops don’t label the croissants as “vegan” on their menus.
Do I need to market them as "vegan" on my menu? No. Plenty of our wholesale partners simply sell them as croissants. The allergy-friendly profile is a bonus for you operationally — it means one product can serve vegan, dairy-free, and egg-free customers without a separate special-order item — but you don't have to lead with it if it's not the right fit for your menu.
Ordering & Minimums
How do I start ordering? Reach out and we'll send you a pricing sheet and bring samples so you can try the product before committing.
Is there a minimum order? Order minimums depend on your account size and delivery zone. We work with both small independent cafés and larger multi-location accounts, and pricing scales with volume — ask us about our volume discount breakdown for higher-frequency orders.
Can I order different quantities as my needs change? Yes. Because our croissants are delivered frozen with a long shelf life, you're not locked into ordering a fixed amount every week. You can adjust order size around actual demand instead of guessing.
Delivery, Storage & Prep
Do the croissants arrive fresh or frozen? Frozen. This is a feature, not a compromise. All items are baked and frozen to retain their freshness and allow you to bake only what you'll actually sell.
How long can I store them? Our croissants have up to a 5-month frozen shelf life, so you can stock up without worrying about waste or spoilage between deliveries.
How long does it take to prepare one for service? About 5-10 minutes to reheat from frozen. No proofing overnight, no dedicated pastry staff, no specialized equipment — your existing kitchen or back-of-house setup can handle it. If thawed, they can be reheated in 1-2 minutes.
Do I need special equipment? No. A standard oven or toaster oven is enough to reheat them to order.
What if I don't sell as many as expected in a day? Because they're stored frozen and only reheated as needed, unsold inventory isn't wasted product — it just stays in the freezer for the next day. That's the zero-waste model built into how we supply.
Why Wholesale Instead of Baking In-House
Isn't it cheaper to bake pastries ourselves? Usually not, once you count labor, ingredient waste, and the learning curve of consistent croissant lamination. Croissants are one of the more technically demanding pastries to produce well. Buying from a specialist bakery lets you offer a premium product without hiring or training pastry staff.
Will the quality be consistent? That's the advantage of sourcing from a dedicated bakery — the product is made the same way, every batch, by people who only make croissants. In-house baking quality tends to vary with staffing changes; wholesale sourcing removes that variable.
Fit & Differentiation
What makes Curious Cat different from a food-service distributor? We're a local Florida bakery, not a national frozen-food supplier. Your customer will notice the superior premium product offering while you have flexibility on order size and a direct relationship — you can actually talk to the bakery, not a call center.
Do you work with hotels, or just cafés? Both. We supply boutique hotels looking to upgrade a continental breakfast program as well as independent coffee shops and restaurants.
Can I see who else carries your products? Yes — our current wholesale partners include cafés and restaurants across Tampa Bay and Orlando, including retailers recognized in "Best of" lists such as Creative Loafing's Best of the Bay and Orlando Weekly's Best of Orlando.
How do I get started? Reach out and ask for samples and a pricing sheet. Most of our wholesale relationships start with a small trial order before scaling up.
Curious Cat Bakery is a wholesale bakery based in St. Petersburg, FL, supplying croissants to coffee shops, cafés, restaurants, and hotels throughout Tampa Bay and Orlando.