Upon finding Nicole with Gingerspice Bakery, I was intrigued. I was excited by her website’s portfolio of abstract yet clean presentation of cakes and the fact that if we chose her, we’d truly be supporting a small/emerging business! Followin...g our cake tasting with her, we were sold. Her cakes are delicious! The flavors were unique and fresh. After placing a deposit, however, our experience with her went downhill.
It quickly became apparent that Nicole was not as business/customer savvy as she was cake-baking savvy. Almost every email I sent her took at least two weeks to reply. More than that, though, was pricing. A big reason why we chose Nicole was the fact that her prices (for the design ideas I gave her) were within our budget- something most couples try to adhere to. I wasn’t particularly in love with one of the designs, but we had time so neither of us were too worried. Approximately two months before our wedding I sent her an idea I fell in love with and she was excited about it as well, saying she could create that design. Cool! There was no further conversation until I got an invoice from her less than 3 weeks before our wedding with an escalated design price. At no point during our previous conversation did she indicate that this final design would cost more than what I was originally quoted me. I had fallen in love with a cake design above our budget and I felt misled. Why hadn’t she mentioned the price increase when we were discussing the final design?
She explained that the new design would be more labor intensive, which is fair and I respect that. This, however, should have been communicated up front. I ended up settling for one of my original design ideas, which I was ok with because, budget. When I saw the cake on our wedding day, I was underwhelmed and disappointed by the final product. The result was a far cry from the design picture. Please don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t expecting an exact replica (it was a Pinterest photo, so I was realistic) but the result was not great. The piping was sloppy and she should have used a smaller tip to achieve the look I asked for. I know this because as a hobby I decorate cakes myself and anyone who would have compared the photo to the actual cake would agree with me.
It tasted fine, but her decorating skills and business management skills need work.