Do You Actually Make Cakes?

Or, rather, do you actually want people to see your cakes? Yesterday's episode in cake hunting was somewhat frustrating:


My "job" for the day was to call Central Market and another baker (who shall remain nameless in my effort to not be sued) in Houston to see if I could set up a cake tasting. The help desk picked up the phone, but it just kept ringing in the bakery. No big deal, I was going to call the Austin store to see if we could do the tasting at their store anyway. I called up the Austin store and asked if I could talk to bakery, and they picked up the phone fairly quickly.

"Hi, do you make wedding cakes?"
"Yes, we do. Unless you want a tiered cake; we don't have the equipment to make tiered cakes."

Great, well that wouldn't do. Next on the list was the other baker, who I knew might be problematic, since the shop's website said that they only did weekend consultations/tastings with plenty of notice. Here's how that conversation went:

"Hello, I'd like to schedule an appointment for a tasting."
"Our next opening is February 19th."
"We're coming in from out of town, so we were hoping to get an appointment on the weekend, do you have anything on the 16th?"
"No, I don't have any appointments that day. We only do weekend (Friday and Saturday) appointments when there aren't deliveries that have to be made."
"OK, well how about March 15th, would that work."
"That day isn't open for appointments yet, because we don't know how many deliveries there will be."

Seriously. I don't know when I'm supposed to call for an appointment, but apparently yesterday was not the day to do so.

Later in the afternoon, I called the Houston Central Market back, and the person who picked up the phone was very helpful. She told me that all we needed to do for a tasting was come into the store and ask to talk to the cake decorator. Huzzah!