It's not about me, it's about you!
Posted on Oct 25, 2011
I can’t believe that I’ve never covered this topic. I have joked about on the blog earlier in its life, about how difficult my task is since I have to smell the sweet aroma of Cake Boutique products from the beginning to the end of my journey. But I was recently reminded that even in the wedding cake side of the business, delivery is optional; I thought I should talk a little about why you should consider it mandatory. And it’s not about me—it’s about YOU.
If you’ve been through a consultation with the Cake Ladies, particularly for a wedding cake, you know that they charge for delivery. There are bakeries out there who deliver for free, and at four dollars per gallon plus some number of dollars per hour, I applaud them for their generosity! I am sure that most of the people reading this can understand that this cost is included in their price; The Cake Boutique simply chooses to list it separately. But either way, I can’t imagine someone wanting to take on this responsibility for such a treasure as a Cake Boutique cake.
I ran across a story on the Web about someone being tasked to pick up a wedding cake at a local bakery and bring it to an equally local reception hall. Easy, right? Just a few miles, a new and mostly reliable vehicle, not a lot of traffic, everything is easy! Except that the new and mostly reliable vehicle was a pickup truck. The easiest place to put the cake was right behind the driver’s seat, on a flat surface, one known to most of us as “the bed” of the pickup. Imagine the condition of that cake upon its arrival. Even worse was a story about a guy who put the cake on his front seat; one panic stop, and he’s still cleaning buttercream out of his air conditioning vents.
Speaking of air conditioning—one needs to worry about the temperature of a cake, since heat tends to create issues with heavy cakes. In the winter, though, who needs to worry about that? Especially the bridesmaid who is charged with picking up the cake before she goes to the wedding. It’s cold outside, so there’s no issue, right? So she sets the cake on the floor in the back of the car, where it rests securely for the ride to the reception hall with the happy bridesmaid, who is nice and warm in her car with the heat blowing full blast…right on the side of the wedding cake. Softening it up just in time for it to be lifted out of the car, at which time it sags to the warm side and falls on the ground!
Then there’s the assembly. Most wedding cakes don’t travel all that well when they are fully assembled. So the cake layers are sent separately and assembled at the reception hall. Imagine the cake layers getting there in perfect condition, and then having nobody there to assemble them except the same bridesmaid who picked up the layers—and she doesn’t have any utensils! I have had people tell me about such self-delivery situations, where the guests arrived to find the layers of the cake sitting side-by-side…
Of course, I don’t know if most of these stories are true, but I do know that there are challenges to delivering wedding and party cakes that are best handled by those with experience. And I know that several people have walked through the door, seen the cake they were supposed to pick up, and paid for delivery on the spot; it becomes much clearer when you see it in person.
But I don’t recommend that you wait until then to see. It’s your special day, and it’s important to take nothing to chance. Save yourself the trouble of ending up in a blog post—let the ladies create “A Memory You Can Taste,” sign up for delivery and I’ll make sure it gets there just the way you imagined it!