The Agbay Cake Leveling Tool Story

This is a little history about us as well as how the product came about and the new features we have added that are not available in any other cake leveler.

I have been a member of I.C.E.S. for several years and for the last three years have worked for a very prominent Wedding Cake Specialist in Worcester Ma. The wedding cakes we made were sometimes quite large with many tiers. A tier could be as much as 20” in diameter, 6” high and split several times. This would require an easy, efficient and accurate method to level and split these cakes. As I worked with her leveling tool I was having all kinds of problems. The unit would break causing difficulties adjusting the height, adjustment knobs stripped and would not clamp properly, cakes came out uneven because the blade was too loose and the unit was unstable, etc. I turned to my husband Tony who is a mechanical product design engineer to help me solve these problems.

At first, Tony repaired the tool a number of times and made some alterations and improvements. This would help for a while but eventually something else would break. Finally Tony decided that it wasn’t worth fixing again and suggested that we purchase a professional quality tool that would be more dependable. When I told my boss this she said that the tool she has is the best tool on the market. Hearing that, Tony decided to design a new one for me to make my job easier.

He wanted to design a tool that would be of the highest professional quality, easy to use, accurate every time no matter what type or size cake I was dealing with, and one that would never break. He watched me at work on many occasions to evaluate the problems I was having and compiled a list of design criteria.

The list included:

• Must be strong, professional quality, and designed to last
  
• Easily adjustable for different size cakes
  
• Wide foot design for tool stability
  
• Upright design capable of standing on it’s own
  
• Easy-to-read scales for quick and accurate height adjustments
  
• Large headroom above the blade to accommodate extra tall cakes
  
• Blade capable of cutting through all types of cakes even cakes with fruit and nuts
  
• Blade under tension to prevent climbing and digging into cake
  
• Clamp design that that doesn’t damage adjustment rod
  
• Blade cover for safety purposes when not in use

Tony then started designing the new cake leveling tool and after a number changes, adjustments and improvements came up with a new model. I loved it, as did my boss. We called on members of the Massachusetts and Connecticut I.C.E.S. as well as the Connecticut Icing Artist Club to demonstrate the leveler at upcoming meetings to get some feedback and to evaluate the overall interest of a product such as this. The response was overwhelmingly positive and the members wanted to know how soon they could have one for themselves. They couldn’t believe how quickly, accurately and precisely a cake could be leveled and layered. Tony demonstrated the accuracy of the tool by cutting layers as thin as 1/8 inch.

Their enthusiasm led us to an initial production run, and since then several people have purchased the new leveler. Response from these people has been wonderful! We’ve heard comments like “You’ve got to take this to the Convention,” “I love it,” “I don’t know how I got along without it,” “I use it for every cake,” “It’s so great,” “I was able to do a seven layer cake; something that I would never have attempted to do before,” and so on. Their comments convinced us that this tool was needed. As a result, we applied for a patent, went into full production and we officially introduced the new Agbay Cake Leveling Tool at the convention in Kansas City, MO in 1999. Again at the convention, response was very positive and our new business had been launched. Now's the time to let other cake decorators and bakers know just how easily and accurately they too can save time and hassle while creating wonderful masterpieces!