So I booked a tasting for an hour ago and I just got an email for the woman stating she didn't feel comforatable stopping at my house!!! 
WTF!! I've never had anyone say they felt uncomfortable coming here as I live on a fairly busy street with a church in front of Me and the hospital on the other end of the street! 
Needless to say I just sent her a polite email saying good luck with her wedding and deleting her emails!!!
sari
Maybe she was just uncomfortable visiting you in your home? I mean, did she actually say she wasn't comfortable going to your area of town, or just your house? Perhaps meeting here in a coffee shop in your area, instead of your home, or somewhere convenient for you both, would have been an option?
Do you have a cottage business or a licensed home business, or a separate commercial kitchen? Maybe that was the deal and not the neighborhood? Maybe she is a germophobe and thinks commercial places are cleaner than home kitchens?
Some people just don't like to go with bakers who work from their homes. I had a client tell methat she went to another baker's location, saw that it was her house, and didn't even go in. I was sitting there thinking "well, I work from home, I just happen to be meeting you in the office that I rent with 5 other people for consults." Duh...
As I read your posting I took it to say that you were to have the tasting an hour ago and she sent the message to you in the time just before or a few minutes after the appointed time. Did I read correctly? If so then I say like you did, Good Luck to her. If she waited until then to let you know she did not feel comfortable meeting you at your home then I also feel that she may have been a picky witch. You may want to state in future emails that you can meet them at such and such place for their convenience, maybe that will instill some perception of safety, cleanliness or whatever else they can think of. Glad you are going onto the next bride, whoever that may be, you're better of without this one although the money is difficult to miss. 
evelyn
So I booked a tasting for an hour ago and I just got an email for the woman stating she didn't feel comforatable stopping at my house!!!
WTF!! I've never had anyone say they felt uncomfortable coming here as I live on a fairly busy street with a church in front of Me and the hospital on the other end of the street! Needless to say I just sent her a polite email saying good luck with her wedding and deleting her emails!!! sari
Maybe it was a parking issue? Otherwise I've got nothing.
Maybe it was your landscaping? Diapered, dirty children running in your sprinkler? Car up on blocks in your lawn? Paint peeling? Did it look like a yard sale on your front porch? Maybe you could look at your house from the street and see if you have any room for improvement? I'm sure you're not white trash like me, lol, but there may be something she was sensitive to. Or maybe she is just an idiot?
I am putting in a commercial bakery in my garage and I am very sensitive to the lawn. I mow it before consultaions and it kills me that my husband has a half pipe in our side yard (30' x 12' and 5' high). I have the mower, a wheel barrow, lumber, portable fire pit, piles of dirt from our pool being dug, dead plants, and toys scattered everywhere currently. And bikes and scooters and a power wheels jeep and mini ramps in the driveway. I told my husband if he can't keep the yard looking better, he is going to have to build me a privacy fence to hide it all behind!! It is so sorry looking. Oh, my grass came up patchy this year, also, so we have mud puddles. And our wooden playset needs pressured washed and sealed again. And the house is a dingy blue grey that looks faded, but it isn't, it came that color, the buckets of paint for touch-ups are in the basement. UGLY! So we will be repainting the house as well. After he is done helping me in the garage, he is going to have to do something about it all, while I get ready to open!
I'm sorry your feelings got hurt but, I'm glad you were able to get over it. Neeeeext...
(another reason not to do in-house tastings...deliver samples, if they want to continue it's a $50 reserve the date fee, schedule consult (what's she gonna do then...she'll feel more comfortable showing up to the consult than she would giving up the $50 bucks to cancel it), deliver cake...done.
Who knows why ppl do what they do. Anyway my partner said maybe she was afraid someone would break into the house and steal her cake before the wedding! LOL
I've moved on to the next bride
LOL you are so funny, well things happen for a reason and you are proabably better off with out making this cake. she was proabably a very hard customer to please.
I agree with others that you are better off. It seems strange she would be on your street and call from her car to cancel but whatever. It doesn't sound like the neighborhood given what you describe. Whatever her reason, you are better off with other clients.
Annabakes, LOL you are too funny! I keep the yard raked before guests come and it does need lots of landscaping but that is on my list for this year as I've only owned the house for a year.
If it was the yard then she was too high maintence for Me! Probably a PITA to boot
Thanks for the feedback everyone!
Annabakes, LOL you are too funny! I keep the yard raked before guests come and it does need lots of landscaping but that is on my list for this year as I've only owned the house for a year.
If it was the yard then she was too high maintence for Me! Probably a PITA to boot
Thanks for the feedback everyone!
Same here, we got he keys April 1st, last year, and moved in 3 weeks later. It is the biggest yard in the whole neighborhood, and that is a mixed blessing! Everybody who has tiny lawns have perfect thick grass and twirly shaped bushes, I have dandelions and clover. And some weird tree that blooms white and has this weird, earthy.....seminal-type smell. It is horrible, but the only tree, so I can't bear to chop it down.
I agree about her being too high maintenece and a PITA!
I have the biggest yard too! I'm on the corner lot and the previous tentants used the front yard as a parking lot! so all of that has to be reseeded and a walkway added. My office is where the clients come in through the backdoor which has the walkway and the driveway. My mission is to kill the clover!! lol it looks like some weird mini forest on the lawn!!
We are in a cul-de-sac, and have a corner. It is weird, but it is like if you took a square cake, cut a big round hole in the middle and sliced it in 4 wedges. One wedge would be our yard, lol. The front yard is tiny, but you can see the side yard up the block, when you turn the corner. My neighbor to the left mows her lawn ever other day, whether it needes it or not, lol! She is mowing right now! So her perfect lawn makes mine look awful!
I just tell people I like the clover and dandelion so the bees can make honey! Bees are few and far between in the midwest. We had a radio advisory a couple hundred times last year advising bees were in a shortage, and we shouldn't kill them.
The parking lot sounds lovely, lol!
I don't think I would feel safe having perfect strangers to my home. I would meet clients in a public place. You never know what nut job will show up at your house.
There are so many scammers and scary things going on, I guess I can understand that in our day. I used to do tastings at my house but I stopped because my kids were making it difficult. (My very last tasting...I was doing a wedding tasting and I thought my toddler was in a nap and the other boys gone with my husband....but right in the middle of my tasting my toddler woke up with a VERY poopy diaper everywhere...this was a couple years ago now...and the entire house started to smell like poop when the lady was trying to taste cake! She did not book even though I apologized profusely, and I vowed never to have another tasting at my house! I have them at a coffee shop now.)
I do have some cake pickups at my house but now since I'm taking larger orders, I end up doing more deliveries than pickups, which is fine with me because it does seem more professional.
[quote="Kitagrl"]........(My very last tasting...I was doing a wedding tasting and I thought my toddler was in a nap and the other boys gone with my husband....but right in the middle of my tasting my toddler woke up with a VERY poopy diaper everywhere...this was a couple years ago now...and the entire house started to smell like poop when the lady was trying to taste cake!.......quote]
Mmm! Don't you just love the smell of poop when you are trying to eat cake? Do you think LorAnn bottles that? 
I still deal with poopy diapers, my latest son turned 2 yesterday, we take them outside immeadiately and spray air freshener like crazy. My husband is here if I have a tasting, but he would most likely walk us though the changing, telling how much poop, how close the poop was to the edge of his diaper, what color and consistency the poop was, and how many wipes it took to get it all off his hiney, how much the diaper weighed, and then waft the poopy diaper right under their noses after it was changed!!! He is not afraid of poop!
I am really glad we are converting the garage and that we will have a separate area in there for tastings and consultations. And we have a big door between the garage and the house.
Our state and city health inspectors have said that home bakeries are often times cleaner than resturant kitchens. 
Have you ever peaked inside a commercial kitchen and seen sweaty workers, fingers in/on the face, etc? I have...and I've found hair in food from MANY high scale places.
Commerical kitchens usually don't offer a kitchen tour before they prepare your food. If I were using a home baker, I'd definitely want to meet at the baker's house and verify the kitchen was CLEAN! It's also not a bad idea to take a peak in their bathroom...how someone maintains their bathroom speaks VOLUMES about their overall hygiene. 
I'm fortunate to have a husband that takes my daughter outside when I have tastings or entertains her upstairs (never had a problem). I always make sure he's home when strangers are in our home, I don't take those chances.
Our state and city health inspectors have said that home bakeries are often times cleaner than resturant kitchens.
Have you ever peaked inside a commercial kitchen and seen sweaty workers, fingers in/on the face, etc? I have...and I've found hair in food from MANY high scale places.Commerical kitchens usually don't offer a kitchen tour before they prepare your food. If I were using a home baker, I'd definitely want to meet at the baker's house and verify the kitchen was CLEAN! It's also not a bad idea to take a peak in their bathroom...how someone maintains their bathroom speaks VOLUMES about their overall hygiene.
So...if commercial kitchens do not allow tours...why should a home baker? You just said home bakers are usually cleaner, anyway.... and obviously licensed home bakers have passed some sort of inspection.
I did not say that the hair was dirty. I just don't appreciate pulling it out of my mouth. 
I may be misinterpreting the tone of your message. It's not an attack on commercial kitchens, if that's what was inferred. Home bakers can do what they want, I offer home tastings because it works for me, and I want my customers to see my kitchen. I only bake when my family is asleep so I can put the kitchen on LOCK DOWN.
Your avatar cake is really pretty. I love black, white & red!
If you have a separate kitchen, post pictures of your kitchen on your "About Us" page, along with a copy of your HD permit and insurance certificate. This should show that you are legit and professional. My bakery is decorated as if it was a storefront and shows well in pictures. It's just for me, my daughters, a few nieces, and an occasional client, but it is a great work environment. For a few hundred dollars and a few cans of paint, you can make the inside professional while you work on the outside. For places where you can bake from your home kitchen, pictures of your clean, orderly, kitchen could serve the same purpose.
People do not like to go to places that are unfamiliar. That is why car dealerships give away oil changes. If you have been there before, you are more likely to return when your car needs a repair rather than go to someplace unfamiliar. The pictures on the site will help to make your bakery "familiar" to potential cients. They will know what to expect.
i think that customers can have expectations on what kind of 'experience' they want when making a purchase like a wedding cake. Sure there are going to be some that are result-minded and can focus purely on the best cake for the best price. But others are going to want to be wooed and dazzled, because they truly enjoy the planning process and they get wrapped up in the fairy tale of wedding planning.
It's probably similar to going to a hair dresser's home for a cut and style vs. going to a sleek salon with an espresso bar and complementary reflexology massage while you get a 10 minute shampoo. You can get the same haircut, but the packaging is much more pampering at the salon. At least the drive-by customer knew enough about what she was expecting not to waste the time of the OP when she knew that it wasn't what she was looking for.
A previous post made me think, is it possible she didn't know/realize that you were a home-based business?
I have that posted on my website but some get the contact info from the phone book or other sources (like all those wonderful online resource sites that have gathered their info from public sources like the phone book which, btw, was NOT supposed to list my physical address but did anyway...it's obvious who the confused passersby are...sloooooooooooooow) that doesn't give that information.
Just a thought is all
I did not say that the hair was dirty. I just don't appreciate pulling it out of my mouth.
I may be misinterpreting the tone of your message. It's not an attack on commercial kitchens, if that's what was inferred. Home bakers can do what they want, I offer home tastings because it works for me, and I want my customers to see my kitchen. I only bake when my family is asleep so I can put the kitchen on LOCK DOWN.
Your avatar cake is really pretty. I love black, white & red!
I'm sorry, I think I misunderstood the tone of your message.
My house was clean enough for tastings but with the kids its just too much to worry about. Plus the house is not ours...if it were, I'd pay to have a garage made into a cake shop. haha. But since its not our house, I have to deal with what we have for now....and it works. I sure do wish I could have home tastings though!
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