Four years ago, I wrote about how I was spending an embarrassing amount of time watching news about the American Presidential election.
I have apparently made very little progress in my life as now four years later I am doing the same thing.
Last time they had an election in the States, the host of one of Toronto’s big parties ordered dozens of cupcakes with custom sugar toppers, half with Hillary’s photo and half with Donald’s.
Yeah, so anyway, so far we have not had any orders for Biden and Trump cupcakes – maybe because of the, oh, pandemic happening, and maybe because we are all still wondering what the heck happened last time.
However, we are doing okay here at PGB.
For every challenge that is coming up, there are two things that are going well.
Almost always at our Thursday meetings, Andrea, Ailish and I have some laughs.
Andrea even came to the last meeting carrying assorted samples of Designer Cakes and Treats of the Week for the upcoming holiday season and – YES!! – she wanted our opinion on how the Pumpkin Caramel Macchiato Designer Cake tasted. That was very exciting, and Ailish and I were happy to comply. We proceeded to sample (“hungrily devour given it was lunch time”) one of the most delicious cakes I’ve ever tasted.
Also in the category of good news, we heard yesterday from a lovely customer in the Maritimes that his shipment of icing and PGB cake mix had arrived safely – he even sent photos of his creations – and over the weekend, the storefront renovation was completed and looks really great, now more suited to our advance order or pick-up-and-go approach.
In years past, when we were expanding, struggling to find trained bakers and customer service professionals, and receiving corporate orders valued at amounts we haven’t seen for months in the pandemic, I don’t remember really celebrating small wins like having a Treat of the Week tasting.
We did everything, I think, much faster.
Like most other small business owners today, I continue to wonder where this is all going, but it does seem to be headed in the right direction, and we’re having fun in the process. Not much more we can ask at the moment.