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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."
My wife uses Groupon all the time and so by extension I use Groupons. I hate them for precisely the GPs reason. Retailers ask if you are using a Groupon. If you say yes you almost always get substandard treatment/products. The companies who use Groupon overextend themselves and then hire temps or decrease quality to cover for their mistake. It's bad for businesses and bad for customers. The only one it's good for is Groupon.
TODO create witty sig.
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.