Operations at The Gift of Cake
What does it take to be the best online cake delivery service?
On the face of it, how hard can it be? Bake a birthday cake, put it in a box and post it to the customer.
Simple, right?
In this article, you can get an inside look into The Gift of Cake’s operation. Learn how cake delivery works from start to finish. Find out what is involved in making sure cakes arrive at their destination safely and quickly. We cover it all.
It takes hard work to offer the best online cake delivery service!
Cake ingredients and packaging
The Gift of Cake has a simple philosophy when it comes to quality. Only the best will do! By sourcing top-notch ingredients, we’re able to make the decision process easier. We don’t skimp on quality!
Using real butter instead of margarine, for example, or sourcing real vanilla paste instead of synthetic vanillin all adds cost, but is necessary for a company that offers you the best online cake delivery service.
Read our blog to find out why natural vanilla is the best option.
As a gifting business, the experience of unwrapping the cake has to be fun and indulgent but it also has to arrive in one piece!
At first glance, the outer box doesn’t look like your standard, sturdy corrugated cardboard. It is smooth and white with discreet branding so looks more aesthetical than practical, but looks can be deceiving. Our boxes have been designed for cake delivery and can withstand over 100kg of weight. You can test this fact by standing on the box!
The shiny, metal gift tins are what turns the experience from receiving just a cake to receiving a cake gift. They are very expensive, but form a necessary part of the service.
Visit our blog to see our Top Cake Gift Box.
You can discover why these tins are made in the UK, in London, instead of buying cheap from China on our blog.
Next , the gift tin is wrapped in quality, branded tissue paper and sealed with a gold ribbon. A personalised message card completes the gift and ensures a great experience for the recipient.
You can find more information and images of our beautiful packaging on the gift wrapping page.
Baking and quality control
The unsung heroes of providing the best online cake delivery service are the bakers. A LOT of time is spent on training and perfecting recipes. Their job is to make sure that every cake is baked and decorated to perfection but it doesn’t always go to plan!
You can see how our Red Velvet Cakes are made on our blog.
At the quality control stage, any cake which isn’t perfect gets rejected and put aside. But don’t worry, they aren’t thrown away! A company called Too Good To Go helps tackle food waste and imperfect cakes are snapped up at a discount by local people using their brilliant app.
No food manufacturer is ever perfect so it’s important to minimise wastage where possible.
Marketing our online cake delivery service
This may surprise you but the biggest cost in providing the best online cake delivery service is marketing. It’s impossible to sell a cake if no one knows about it!
Every ecommerce business strives for as much organic search traffic as possible but there’s no escaping the need for paid marketing. The Gift of Cake runs paid advertising campaigns through Google, Facebook, Instagram and other affiliate programs which amounts to a large percentage of revenue.
For example, if you search for ‘best carrot cake to buy‘ on Google, there’s a chance that you’ll see an advert for The Gift of Cake…but it’s a very competitive market!
Other marketing costs include a 15% off voucher code for creating an account (you can find the sign up form at the bottom of our home page), exclusive subscriber offers, exclusive social media offers and collaboration promotions. We regularly reward our customers with promotional products like Montezuma’s chocolate or Teapigs tea bags, and we also make sure to offer free delivery for certain calendar events.
To thank our customers for their continued support, we’re committed to offering special discounts and promotions on a regular basis.
Plus, there’s a multitude of the other services and systems we need to ensure The Gift of Cake is the best online cake delivery service in the uk; Trust Pilot subscription, accounting software, website development and maintenance, email marketing software, SEO tools…the list goes on!
Order processing and delivery
Once you’ve searched on Google for the ‘best carrot cake to buy‘ and placed your order through the website, the order processing begins.
The Gift of Cake offers a nominated date delivery service so around 85% of orders going out on any particular day are already in the system that morning. But lots come in just before the 2pm cut-off for next day cake delivery which provides a challenge!
We take extra care to ensure that each recipient gets the correct cake, message card and postage label. There’s nothing worse than the wrong cake going to the wrong person! The packing team work carefully and methodically. At The Gift of Cake, we value the importance of presentation in packaging. We take extra steps to ensure that all parcels are delivered with the highest levels of quality and care.
At around 4pm, a courier arrives to collect the parcels and scans each one as it goes on the van. This scan triggers an automated text message notification to the recipient, keeping them informed of their order and its delivery status. Our courier records every stage of the parcels journey, from collection to delivery. If any issues arise then our customer service team can respond swiftly.
DPD are not the cheapest courier service but they have the highest ‘next day’ delivery success rate of any UK courier. This is extremely important when offering the best online cake delivery service.
Click here to read how DPD offset 100% of their carbon emissions.
You can read our shipping information here.
Customer service for the best online cake delivery service
Admittedly, not every order goes exactly to plan. In most cases, this is due to an issue with delivery. Whatever the issue may be, great customer service is always top priority. As the saying goes “Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts”.
You can contact our customer service team by telephone, email, webchat or through social media. They are ready to help with any enquiry you may have.
Our customers seem to think we do a pretty good job! You can read our customer reviews on Trust Pilot.
If you want to test The Gift of Cake out for yourself, head over to our shop, choose the cake that takes your fancy, pop in your billing and shipping details and your required delivery date, and we’ll take care of the rest. Here are 6 Reasons To Send A Cake Gift.
Also, be sure to check out our Cakespiration blog for news, recipes and handy tips for all things cake!
