We have at last landed on the perfect offering of Homestyle and Designer cakes.
By “perfect” I mean, customers are buying them.
One of our original fondant cakes was called “The Marie-Antoinette” Oh my gosh I loved that design…still do…sadly, no one ever bought this perfect design!
I’ve written a few times in this blog about the complicated task of finding out what customers really will buy. I just read an article on the recent increase in share price for fast food chains. The secret was that they started focusing on their #1 segment: “Hungry young men”. Yes, they actually have a segment called that! Turns out that if you are in the burger business, figuring out what my twenty-something sons want is really smart. It is not going to be a salad.
Similarly at PGB, for special occasions, our customers want our Designer Cakes to be reasonably priced buttercream cakes with luscious rosettes and petals of icing – or colourful sprinkles – or simple lines of icing in pale colours.
Here is an example — the very popular Rosette cake:
And for an every day cake, a 6 or 9 inch round (or 8 x 12 rectangle) cake in their favourite PGB cake and icing flavours will do just fine.
Keep it simple is what we have learned.
The other exciting thing is that we have perfected the most delicious protein fortified cupcake! I really love them. Now we need to find wholesale buyers and I do not have a clue how to do this. Which brings me to an entrepreneurship workshop I am participating in tomorrow at the University of Toronto Career Centre. One suggestion I will mention is not to get too down about having an idea but being clueless. Take a reasonable shot in the dark to get some help and that step will lead you closer to the right answer. I’m taking my own advice in moving along with our delicious protein fortified cupcake project, so stay tuned.
