THE LESSON OF
THE BEST CUPCAKES IN TOWN
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| Cupcake array with the not-so-subliminal Alice in Wonderland “Eat me” message. |
More specifically, as higher-rent storefronts along the main street and around the “fashionable” downtown retail district become available, they are occupied by well-intended-but-unproven “bakers” plying their trade with offerings of high-end cupcakes and other Cake-Boss-wannabe bakery goods.
A tasty idea, certainly.
But --
Most of these enterprises don’t last the length of their leases.
Blame it on the cooking shows, lifestyle magazines and cable channels I guess. The reality of the business is --
It’s not as glamorous as it seems. Surely there are many factors contributing to the quick demise of these cupcake emporiums, starting with the naming process.
Can “KupKake Korner” really be an enduring business? House o’ Cupcakes? YumYum Cupcakes? CupCake Corral? Brownie Points?
But I digress …
Just call me The Cupcake Curmudgeon.
Catchy names aside: Any moderately successful business person might intuit some of the lack-of-longevity causes. And other troublesome factors are, no doubt, unique to the business of baking. So few outside the industry have an intimate enough understanding to discuss knowledgably.
But still –
That didn’t stop me from griping about this entrepreneurial foolhardiness at a recent breakfast gathering of “trusted advisors.”
And there a friend shared the following story of a cupcake entrepreneur who, in the search for perfection, nearly sacrificed her success.
The beginnings of the tale – apocryphal, I suspect, but instructive nonetheless – have a familiar ring.
Praised as a homemaker for providing “the best tasting, most popular cookies” and cupcakes and other bake goods for all manner of grammar school birthday parties, PTA fundraisers, Scout outings, and the like -- and encouraged by her family -- she took modest steps toward making her baking into a profit-making enterprise.
And, surprise!
Her dough started making dough. (I couldn’t resist.) Her early commercial efforts were rewarded with success.
But as demand and production rose, she worried that the non-uniform shape of her output didn’t measure up to her high standards and did not reflect well on her. Despite a pretty good grip on the business basics --
The baker became so caught up with the ideal of striving for perfect, unvarying cookies that production stalled.
Sure, every cookie and cupcake delivered by the bakery was perfectly and uniformly proportioned. But to achieve this perfect output, shipments were delayed, new marketing went untended, and the new enterprise slipped back from a promising start and was barely breaking even.
Kid wisdom to the rescue. In the midst of this journey to the brink of disaster, one of the baker’s children observed –
“Gee, Mom ...
All your cookies look just like the packaged kind.”
In that moment the baker realized that her core customers weren’t necessarily looking for or buying "perfection."
No one cared much about the uniformity of her cookies and cupcakes.
They cared about the taste. Making “the best tasting cookies in town” resumed – with each baked good having its own unique shape.
No “cookie cutter” cookies. Sales picked up, productivity kept pace easily, and the business expanded. And not one cookie in the batch looks exactly like another.
TGIM Takeaway: Striving for perfection is noble and good. But keep in mind that what’s “perfect” is often unattainable and may actually be undesirable.
As Shakespeare observed in King Lear: “Striving to be better, we oft mar what’s well.”
TGIM IDEA IN ACTION: Set and aim for lofty goals. Just make sure your passion matches the desire of the world at large.
And that’s one way to insure that the cookie doesn’t crumble.
Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing
8 Depot Square
Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373
tgimguy@gmail.com
P.S. Icing on the cake:
“Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.There is a crack, a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.”
Singer, songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen sang that chorus in Anthem, a song he claimed took him 10 years to write. It was released around 1992.
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