November 10, 2016

Lessons from my first bake sale

So my office had a charity food sale recently. Every department had to contribute something because this was an initiative from the regional office.

I know, not exactly in the spirit of charity.

Unsurprisingly, I represented my department, knowing that the two other guys in my department (yes, our department consisted of only 3 guys) wouldn't participate in such a thing.

I decided to bake.

Over the weekend, I baked 24 red velvet cupcakes and 18 blueberry muffins. The equally tough part was transporting 40 of them from home to the office via public transport. The cost in itself amounted to about RM80.

So I handed my babies over to the other members of my office to be sold since I had work to do, a little worried that my RM20 box of 4 will not sell well since it was placed alongside donuts and biscuits priced from RM2-5. Heck, even I wouldn't buy them.

The initial plan was to sell them at RM6 each, but since the box I had could fit four and it didn't seem like a good idea to unpack all of them and display it on a platter, I decided to just wing it and sell them for RM20.

To my surprised and delight, they sold out! Just this morning, someone told me that my baked goods sold out before they started selling the other stuff at half-price. Another person told me people were asking if they were made with butter and other random questions. I really wish I was there to tell them that I did not skimp in ingredients. Heck, the blueberry muffins were chock-full of blueberries, and not one of those pathetic ones with a swirl of blueberry jam on its surface.


Note to self:

  1. Add a note on the box with words like 'homemade', 'quality ingredients', 'full of blueberries' etc. Could do with more description.
  2. Add contact method so people can come back and tell me if they were good! 

I'm still a little sceptical that people paid RM20 for a box. Better not think too much about it.