I have been wanting to do this for ages, ever since I went down to the Town Council over 18 months ago just after christmas to enquire about a cupcake stand at our Sunday Markets. Alas, the same month, the "original" cupcake lady, Leesa, started her stand that is going strong now, and although I know, being a marketer, that competition is never a bad thing, this is a very small town!!
Anyway, I have a stall planned and booked in for our big school fete later this year, when I saw this small expo for our Preschool advertised in the school newsletter. I thought, what a great idea for a small test of my product, to see if I can actually sell, if my product is good, and it's not all just in my head! LOL! So I put my hand up with one week to go and no real materials or plan (bags, boxes, tableclothes, trays etc!). Thanks to the inlaws in Mornington for rushing up my boxes and bags.
Well, the jury is in, the cake stall was a sell out before closing. I am euphoric!
The town had lots on on Saturday, the Bradshaw school fete, the local anglican school lawn sale, a church fete, a businesses big sale, all the local sport, a show and shine car event, not to mention just getting on with life!
This Expo was not very well advertised and competed with things that promised to be much bigger, so I thought it would be good to do a small amount of baking and see what happened. I donated the majority of the sales back to the preschool. I just took out my costs and a bit more to fund the next venture.
I set about baking 125 cupcakes on the day before, four flavours, vanilla, chocolate, snickerdoodle and lemon meringue (for my need for a meringue/marshmallow frosting in my life!). I ditched some (quality control), the kids and the Workaholic gobbled up others, and we ended up with about 105. I made cute little toppers for the vanilla and chocolate ones and baked and decorated them all on Friday. Fresh is best!
Saturday was the big day, nerves were a plenty, would I sell any? Would it be a dismal failure? I like the Asian philosphy of the first sale being an indication of your day's sales. My first sale was for six! And we were off!
I loved it. I wish I could do it more often. It was so much fun, the customers were great and gave great feedback, "why don't you do a market stall?", "where can we get more?". One man snuck back about six times, it was very cute.
I didn't really go all out with the set up because I wasn't sure if this would work, so there aren't too many photos I want to publish here. It was a great learning experience. If I was going to do it more often I would get a better table cloth (not plastic - LOL), a banner and some better trays (not aluminum foil). The wind played havoc with my flyers/bags/napkins so the table had lots of rocks, bags etc trying to hold everything in place. Didn't look as nice as I would like, but hey, it was a test!
At the start of the day the table was full with lots of cakes underneath, about half way through it was looking pretty lonely with one tray and a couple of cakes, I was very tempted to pack up, because it was all looking so lonely, but glad I didn't because a very nice boy got my last one! Happy eating Jayden!
Funny thing was that I had promised I would take left overs to our friend's place for dinner that night, expecting there to be plenty, so I had to go home and bake another batch of lemon meringue cupcakes on Saturday afternoon. About time I got a bit more confidence I think!
Anyway, the blog is going to be a bit silent for the next 3 weeks as I have some fruit cakes brewing for the end of the month wedding cakes and 2 other novelty cakes due at the same time, before I rush off to Planet Cake for a few days, so all my energy will be going into those cakes.
Don't despair, you will be all blogged out with multiple entries in early June! Oh, and Oscar's birthday is coming up in June - he has said he wants a Mr Tickle cake - watch out!
Until then, have fun, cause you know I will be, happy in cake heaven!!
Kate, it sounds as if your cake stall was a real blast and you so enjoyed it. Was workaholic any help??? Glad it went so well, well done girl! MIL
ReplyDeleteAh, I had a ball. The Workaholic helped me set up and then convinently had to step away to buy me a mother's day gift and left the kids with me. In his defence, they wouldn't budge - far too much face painting, hair colours and other fun to be had. Luckily the space was small and contained so I could keep half an eye on them!
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