On a cold wet Tuesday afternoon I received a call on my mobile phone while away from the shop, my number had been passed to the customer by t2he Woodley branch. Could we possibly help? She needed some cakes to be sent by courier, all to arrive on the same day. It didn’t matter if they were fruit or sponge, just whatever we could do in the time and as long as they were big enough to feed the amount of people who would be there. Fruitcakes it was then. When do you need them for and just how many would you like???????????????????????
It’s an answer I guess I will not hear very often. They have to be delivered in 14 days, which gave us just 13 days to get them produced and packed BUT how many? She said she would send that information in an email so I could quote her. I went home and opened my email and then I realised we may be in a little trouble here, she only needed 315 (YES – that is three hundred and fifteen!) cakes varying from 6" round up to 14" square.
We had to keep in our mind that we already had our shop customer's cake orders to fulfil. Some places would require several cakes to get enough portions to feed the army of folk there.
The calculator poised, brain at the ready we jostled and played with figures to get the right size cake for all and jotted down the price, then postage - where do you begin working out courier and packing charges for so many cakes. Our couriers were great and helped as much as possible. We knew what was involved in packaging a cake up, we do it regularly to send orders out all over the UK. But so many!
The packaging company is only down the road so they said they would do lots of small deliveries when ever we rang to keep us supplied until the job was done.
Next the ordering had to start for the cakes, the ingredients, icing, boards etc. What a nightmare (but fun)! It took about 4 days for everything to arrive and I suspect caused a few raised eyebrows at our suppliers as well. We were now down to 9 days and some of them were weekends.
The staff jammed cakes and rolled icing till they were doing it in there sleep, logos were printed and each one had to have the words "Thank you from" piped by hand and the logo placed beneath. Never mind about writers cramp, what about pipers cramp???
Each cake was crimped on the cake edge and around the board; Orange ribbon went around each cake, a bow on the front, black board ribbon and a sprinkle of glitter for that finishing touch. Overtime was the order of the day and everyone mucked in and helped!
We had cakes everywhere; we set up a packing room, what a nightmare. I was in charge of the packing room and the staff came and helped if they were not working in the shop or icing cakes. Boxes were everywhere, rolls of tape galore.
Once the cakes were dried out each cake was gift wrapped with a thank you card from the company we then packaged it up to arrive in perfect condition. As the boxes grew the room got smaller.
Just before the courier company collected the first batch of boxes for us, they were helping us out with a little warehouse space, I had boxes all around, some of them 20" in size, I felt as if I was working in a prison I could hardly move. That night I had a dream of being thrown in prison, for doing what? For buying a meter of Orange ribbon and not telling them what it was for, talk about taking your work to bed with you.
The staff iced the last cake on the Saturday and packed the last cake by Monday afternoon, the courier took away the last box ready for them to go out on the Tuesday on overnight so all would arrive on the Wednesday but that was not my job. I think the couriers did a great job and all arrived on time from lands end to all parts of Scotland and everywhere in between.
It was by far our largest job to date, the staff did a great job in such a short space of time and would we do it all again????
You bet!!!
This is a sincere message of thanks to all who helped complete this order successfully and on time:
the staff, the suppliers, the couriers (oh yes - and even the customer!)
