Know what my favorite thing about this cake is? It’s real. It’s made of flour, sugar, eggs and other stuff that bakers use (I am not a baker) and is presented for the entire duration of a wedding. Guests “ooh” and “ahh” over it all night and then the bride and groom cut into it before serving it to their guests. It’s a tradition that gets played with, but 9 times out of 10, our clients want a wedding cake.
Last week on Shark Tank (one of the best shows of all time ever and if you’re not watching it, please start), a company called Fun Cakes made the first pitch. While they might have actually been in the room for anywhere up to 2 hours, their segment was edited down to about 7 minutes and each shark chewed them up and spit them out. Their numbers didn’t add up (and they were low) and that is a big problem to these multi-million and billion dollar investors.
Normally with Shark Tank I get frustrated when a wedding company comes in. As brilliant as the sharks are, none of them know the wedding industry to understand the products correctly. Case in point: they invested in a photobooth company but not in The Original Aisle Runner. However, this time, they got it right and sent this company packing.
The company claims that most wedding cakes can run anywhere from $1,320-$3,080. Where are they getting these numbers from? My clients spend anywhere from $0-$10,000 on a cake. The company also claims that their rental cakes are a cost effective alternative to today’s couple because “wedding pricing is getting out of hand”. That’s a direct quote from their episode on Shark Tank.
Here’s the thing (and the sharks didn’t mention this/know this): most banquet halls or caterers will provide the couple with a wedding cake. Will it be fancy and hang from the ceiling? Not really. But it will be beautiful enough to show off to your guests, and it will be available in a bunch of different flavors to choose from. Total cost for the couple? ZERO DOLLARS. Many (and I mean many) of my couples will choose to use a cake that is already being provided because they do not want that over the top, dripping in fondant, star of the show cake. On the other side of the spectrum is the client that wants something very specific and is interested in working with a cake designer. Those clients are not renting a fake cake.
So who is the client here? I have no idea. And in the 7 years that this company has been around, they don’t seem to have that answer either. On Shark Tank, they admitted to making $150,000 in 7 years. Quick math: $22K a year. This is a nationwide company, and that number was a big ol’ fondant and glitter encrusted red flag to the sharks.
Years ago, one of the “this is how you save money” rules was to have a small wedding cake for the reception to cut into, and then serve the guests sheet cakes that are in the kitchen. Many banquet halls and caterers will not even allow this practice anymore. This is no longer how you save money anymore than the “have your wedding on a Friday or a Sunday instead of a Saturday” rule. The rules are changing and your banquet hall might not give you the break that you think.
I am all for finding ways to save my clients money, but a fake cake is not the way to do it. You could spend $0 on a cake and still get a cake. So why spend a few hundred on cardboard with fondant? Why? Seriously. Why?
So tell me, do you buy into this? Would you rent your cake?
Check out their site right here: http://www.cakerental.com/
