Blog #2

 Our first few days at Nothing Bundt Cakes have been incredibly insightful into what it takes to run a bakery. The majority of our time has been spent making different cake decorations. It was surprising to me how many are handmade because I didn't realize how much time and effort went into the little things that are often times easy to forget. I had originally thought that many decorations came to the bakery already made, but I learned that not only do the employees have to assemble the decorations, but it is often something they do in between helping a rush of customers or bringing in a shipment of ingredients. While some of the decorations are a bit more tedious than others, assembling them allowed me to not only gain insight into this detail of running a bakery but also allowed our group time to chat with the employees. They were very kind and shared different tips and tricks with us. Some of the decorations we made included cutting down small dowel rods and putting stickers on them with sayings to make little flags, twisting wrapping paper to make their flower-like ‘bow’ decorations, and assembling little graduation caps for a cake topper.

We worked on most of our crafts up front, which helped us learn how the employees interacted with customers. One of the first things our mentor Amber talked about was the store's mission to make everyone's day better. We were able to watch as people came in excitedly to pick up orders for their daughter's wedding or friend's birthday. We were able to see the important role the bakery played in many people's lives which helped instill the bakery's message. Even though we didn't handle any transactions, we had many conversations with customers about the big and exciting events in their lives coming up that they were purchasing something for. Overall, my biggest takeaway from our first few days is how much care and detail goes into every order in order to give people the best experience possible.