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Baker Has to Make 102,000 Cupcakes For Grouponers
Rachel Brown, owner of the small Need a Cake bakery, became a victim of the old adage, "Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it." More than 8,500 people took Rachel up on her Groupon offer of a 75% discount on a dozen cupcakes, forcing her to make over 100,000 cupcakes to fill all the orders. In the end Brown lost almost $20k. "We take pride in making cakes of exceptional quality but I had to bring in agency staff on top of my usual staff, who had nowhere near the same skills. I was very worried about standards dropping and hated the thought of letting anybody down. My poor staff were having to slog away at all hours — one of them even came in at 3 a.m. because she couldn't sleep for worry," she told The Telegraph. "We are still working to make up the lost money and will not be doing this again."
I seem to recall reading that Groupon allows businesses to limit the number of offers available. That is, rather than having to deal with 8,500 orders, Ms. Brown could have limited the offer to 100 (or some other arbitrary number) people.
If my understanding is correct and such a system exists, it would be foolish for a business to not use it.
Groupon should offer a staggered approach. First 100 customers get offered 75% off. Next 100 get offered 50%, then 25%. After a time, the system could float to the discount that was optimal, with some total per day limit.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Yeah, they have one in Gainesville, FL. It has a Sanskrit name, Sarkara, to make you feel more educated and karmic as you spend three dollars and something for a dry cupcake that ought to cost cents. It's *exactly* the same story as with coffee a few years ago: a cup of joe that used to cost cents at a diner or lunch counter in the 80's or before now costs dollars at Starbucks or Your Favorite Local Coffee Store (if you believe that purchasing a parity product at obscenely inflated prices from a "local" merchant as opposed to a chain is somehow morally superior: enjoy handing your money over for frivolities at an accelerated rate regardless). Interestingly, a coffee at the local coffee shop (Volta) around the corner from Sarkara cupcakes cost, to the penny, exactly the same: it's almost as if you're actually purchasing a token foodstuff of purely symbolic value to justify spending time in a place Other Than Home with wifi access, and the merchants are in pricing competition over that time, not over the token food item.
I've only ever baked for 'mom and pop' affairs, so I wouldn't know about chain stores. The first time was for a boss who started with $500 and 2 credit cards 18 years ago and turned it all into a well known gourmet market in the Atlanta area. Another time was for another well known DIY restaurant/bakery in town.
My mother was a pastry chef who has made cakes similar to those on the website of your wife since I was 3 years old. I know the costs and labor involved to make make breads, cakes and other assorted patisserie fair. There is still an insanely low margin on baking using 'fancy' ingredients.
As for Groupon...Groupon costs a lot in food costs, and 2 years later I hadn't seen any significant change in sales that could've been attributed to their involvement.
I personally think the concept of near "compulsory" tipping as practiced by restaurants in some countries is messed up.
At work I don't get tipped for just doing my job, and if my company's customers gave me money directly for just doing my job, or for doing my job differently/better than normal, that's called corruption or just plain wrong. Heck at some places you're not allowed to accept gifts/$$$ above a certain value (usually low, sometimes even _zero_) from customers.
In theory if your employer isn't paying you enough to do your job, you should find another employer or another job. But in practice the "tipping" system is not likely to change in those countries...
If you are paying such prices for the shitty brewed coffee you were getting at a lunch counter, then yes you are being an idiot and getting ripped off.
But an esspresso machine costs significantly more both in initial cost and in maintenance costs than a brewing machine. It also requires more training to use (though Starbucks seems to skip that bit). It's also significantly slower (so you need more staff hours to make the same amount of coffee).
Of course Starbucks coffee is crap, though orders of magnitude better than the swill that passes for brewed coffee (and of course Starbucks does brewed coffee too - but why would you go there for that???)
And cupcakes have none of that. A "gourmet" cupcake is made in exactly the same oven with exactly the same ingredients as a regular cupcake...