Hey all~
I am struggling to make the schedule work with all these brides wanting consultations! I am currently booked into March with consults, although partly because there is a week in Feb that the fam is going on vacation to visit friends.
I have consults/tastings in April already too! And still they keep calling.... Some of these scheduled brides are already booked and want to get their cake designed for Spring/Early summer, which is great, but then it leaves no more space for NEW brides, not to mention those fabulous "early bird" 2012 brides who are ready to spend their $...

My idea is to offer to-go sample boxes- 2 small samples, 2 flavors, and sample cups with icing. (the cakes would be naked). That way they can at least taste the cake and I can send some info FAQs with them too.

I know that there will be people who would just want free cake "to-go," BUT....
a) I would have to have their wedding date available
b) My home studio is a 25-30 minute drive from any larger area, so they would have to REALLLY want that free cake!

What say you? If you do it, has it helped you?

Here is what the cakery I used to work at did:
1. There was a $10 charge that would be deducted from the price of the wedding cake if they use them.
2. They got a choice of 4 cake flavors, 4 fillings, 4 frostings and a fondant disk. They got to pick the choice.
3. We would then take one layer of a 6" round and cut it into 6ths, or a 4 inch cut into quarters or if we didn't have extra cake made, 2 cupcakes. They would be torted, filled and iced as best as we could. (Actually nobody liked to do it, so it was my job for a while).
4. I would put it all on a 10" round, make it up and then freeze it til the day they came. Then it would get put into the fridge. We would send it home with instructions to let it get to room temp before trying it.
5. If they liked the cake and wanted to use the cakery, then they would call and schedule the consult, but not until they had cake samples.

There were exceptions. One person had the cake at a friends wedding and wanted the same thing, stuff like that.

It helped the owner tremendously. The samples would fly out the door. I can't tell you what the rate of return was though, I never kept track of that.