Up Close and Personal With The Fabulous Baker Girls

Sthembiso Sithole

Shoe Cake

What is your business all about and when did you started it?

We are The Fabulous Baker Girls (FBG). We started our business in January 2011. In fact, crazily, we resigned our permanent positions on our belief in our product, and our passion for what we create. Our business is about creating custom cakes. It is our mission to turn our clients’ special occasions into a fabulous celebration through our unique, one-of-a-kind confectionary. We create custom cakes for weddings, anniversaries, engagements, christenings, confirmations, birthdays, or any other function.

Where is your business based and why that particular area or place?

We are based in Kenwyn (Lansdowne), Cape Town. We are a home cake design studio. The location of our house basically dictated where we would base our business.

How did you start your business and why did you start it?

We started the FBG knowing that rental space for a bakery is exorbitant, because of the amount of space needed. In addition, the specialist ovens and equipment meant that we would need to take out some kind of business loan. We decided against this because our planning process indicated to us that we could create our custom cakes quite comfortably in our home kitchen. We started the business because we saw a gap in the market for custom cakes. In addition, we wanted to be our own boss…or cake boss in this case J

Why did you decided to do cakes and please explain how did you get involved in the cake business?

Gucci Handbag Cake

Nazneen has always loved baking. The custom cakes began when she started making birthday cakes for family members. Other people saw the cakes and requested that she bake cakes for them, and that was how it started. Charles has always been entrepreneurial and he is also an artist, having had exhibitions of his abstract art in the past. When Nazneen started baking birthday cakes, she found that she could not keep up with the demand because her cakes were different to the usual cakes that people would buy at a bakery or at a supermarket. Towards the end of last year when we decided that we wanted to start our own business, it seemed a logical step to move into the creation of custom cakes. Although a number of people bake cakes and cupcakes, not many people are able to do what we do in terms of customisation.

Who are your associate partners and what are their roles in your business?

The Fabulous Baker Girls comprises Nazneen Lalla and Charles George (a husband-and-wife-team). Nazneen does all the baking and the fine decorative detail on the cakes, as well as the marketing and the cake designs. Charles, with his artistic background, does the sugar art and the construction of complicated cake toppers. He also does the carving of the cakes, as well as the covering of the cakes with fondant (plastic icing). We have no other partners other than our five year old daughter who is the third, and littlest, Fabulous Baker Girl J

Who finances your business and what kind of cakes you do? You may give the type of cakes you do and their names?

We finance the business ourselves. We have no financial backing; we have no business loans etc. We make any kind of cake and cupcake. We have created handbag cakes, shoe cakes, bustier cakes, kiddies birthday cakes, etc. Your cake dreams are our reality. So if you can dream it, we can make it. We make madeiras, sponges, chocolate mud cakes, carrot cakes etc. We only use chocolate mud cakes for our carved cakes because these cakes are so incredibly dense and therefore can hold up to being carved.  A sponge will just collapse if we tried to use it for some of our creations. Our sponge cakes are the lightest, airiest cakes that you will taste. All our cakes are freshly-baked. We use only real butter and fresh cream in our confectionary. We use absolutely no pre-mixes and we use no preservatives. Our cakes are exceptional in terms of taste as well as design.

Who is your target market and why?

Our target market is divided up into different segments. Primarily for private functions, our target market is women.  Women organise the family functions, and so they buy our cakes. In the time that we have been operating, we have had three men buy cakes. Then we are targeting event planners and wedding coordinators. Usually, every function requires a cake, and the event planners and wedding coordinators offer a bespoke service in which they source all aspects of the function, including the confectionary.

Kiddies birthday cake

What has your business done from the period you have started?

As our reputation has grown so our business has grown ten-fold. We literally started with one sale in January 2011. Our business is visual, and when people see what we are able to do with cake, they place orders. We have been very fortunate in that we have had a number of repeat customers. Also, we have tapped into social networking using FB and, to a lesser extent, twitter. We find that our clients love our cakes so much that they market for us. In this way, we get so many requests for quotations that translate into actual sales, and often the demand is so great that we work practically 24/7 to meet our turnaround time of 3 days to generate a quotation.

What are the challenges that you have come across and how did you manage to overcome them?

Our single biggest challenge has been marketing. We have a zero budget for marketing and had to structure our marketing strategy with this as our main consideration. Nazneen’s experience in the Social Capital Unit, in the Provincial Government of the Western Cape, and Charles experience as a training facilitator of financial advisors have been invaluable in formulating the marketing strategy. We understood that social networking sites such as FB and twitter would be our greatest tool because these sites allow us to display our creations in the best light possible. Our business is visual, and these sites allow us to post pictures of our cakes. Once we post a set of pictures, our Blackberries die on us because of the response to our cakes.

A huge challenge is that people want our cakes at that quality, but they do not want to pay for it. We have had to resist the temptation to drop our prices. We are not a volumes business, and people cannot expect to pay volumes-business prices.  Another challenge is that people often don’t take seriously when we tell them that we need 14 days to one month for the sugar art to dry properly. They give us one week, sometimes even one day. Unfortunately, we have had to turn away customers who wanted the sugar art but within unrealistic time frames. This is a massive challenge because we try to do everything possible to accommodate the client. But sometimes even we are unable to produce a work of sugar art in the compressed time that we are given.

Who are your greatest competitors and what do you normally do to be on top of the game?

Our biggest competitors are other cake design businesses and anyone selling confectionary. It is very easy, and cheaper, to get cupcakes at a supermarket bakery. We stay on top of the game by making sure that we offer our clients a cake or cupcake that they will fall in love with. So our designs are critically important, because they must be visually pleasingMost times people refuse to cut our cakes. This has been the common theme running through nearly all our sales. We always do a follow up a few days after a sale to make sure that the customer was happy with our cakes/cupcakes. The most common comment, consistently, has been, “I refused to cut the cake” or “the birthday boy/girl refused to cut his/her cake”. We have had people with tears in their eyes when they see their cakes, and then again when they cut their cake. We also make sure that our confectionary tastes exceptional. Again, we often hear, I did not want to cut my cake, but when I did it was the best cake I have ever eaten. We stay on top of the game by providing our customers with exactly what they want. If they want the moon as a cake, we will give them the moon as a cake. Our personal touch and exceptional service has always been remarked upon. People love engaging with Nazneen because she takes such an interest in them. She also responds to every comment on FB and every email that is sent to us.

Lastly you may add any relevant information about your business and tell us why people should come and support your business.

We take pride in our ability to create a custom cake for any occasion. We sell an experience. So many people have said that they never had a special cake when growing up, and now we are there, and we provide them with that experience. There is no feeling in the world quite like it when someone realises that this exquisite creation is entirely theirs. People should come and support us if they want to have this experience, or if they want to give this experience to a loved one. When we create a cake for someone, we will make it FABULOUS! That is The Fabulous Baker Girls Promise!! The Fabulous Baker Girls: When ONLY a FABULOUS cake will do!!

For more info or order:  fabakergirls@gmail.com or call Naz at 084 027 2478