[This is a sponsored article with Cake Together.]
When we previously wrote about Cake Together, they just started their operations to help home bakers reach out to bigger markets. Brent, the co-founder then said, “Starting Cake Together allowed these home bakers to focus on what they did best—baking—while we handle the rest.”
To this day, Cake Together still operates with that goal in mind.
When Cake Together launched, they only had 8 bakers on their platform and 4 team members.
The team has since expanded to 10 and they manage more than 130 bakers in Klang Valley, Johor Bahru and Penang, offering over 1,300 cakes through the platform.
Originally just meant to be a cake delivery marketplace, the team’s vision has since shifted. They’re now positioning themselves as a one-stop birthday solution.
Aside from the extensive list of bakers offering sweet options ranging from cakes to pies and desserts, Cake Together also partnered up with different brands to package flowers, gifts and balloons along with their cakes.
Use code: VULCANPOST10 for 10% off your order on Cake Together.
It Takes More Than One To Bake A Cake
In the beginning, the team said that a lot of bakers rejected their service because the bakers didn’t understand or required Cake Together’s service.
But with the support from their 8 pioneering bakers and through social media, they slowly got recognised and soon, bakers started to reach out to them.
The platform now delivers about 1,000 to 1,200 cakes weekly and the team informed us that they’re profitable too. With a streamlined and automated process, their monthly Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) is around RM500,000.
In terms of getting a baker onto the platform, all the baker needs to do is go through an on-boarding session first, and the rest will be handled by the team.
The bakers will then send in their products for a photoshoot session which will be paid by Cake Together.
After that, the products will go through an internal tasting round and Cake Together will discuss potential improvements with the baker on ingredients, packaging and others.
Once that’s done, the baker will be officially available through the Cake Together platform.
To get a better understanding of what Cake Together offers to bakers, we spoke to 3 bakers from Little Collins, Ennoble by Elevete and Kooky Cream.
Helping Local Bakers To Expand
Little Collins was one of the pioneering bakers on the platform and Frances Voon, the founder said that Cake Together contributes around 20-25% of their sales. Despite owning a retail store, their reach was initially limited to in-person customers.
But with an online platform like Cake Together, their reach expanded massively. This helped them to break-even, even during the MCO and the CMCO period.
Edwin Chan, the baker behind Ennoble by Elevete backed up that statement.
As a home-based baker, he initially struggled with baking, logistics, customer inquiries, menu development and so on. But with the help of Cake Together, he managed to focus on baking, while the Cake Together platform helps with the rest.
Gladys Chan, the owner of Kooky Cream is also one of the pioneering bakers for Cake Together. Despite having her own platform for sales, she’s been working with Cake Together since the start.
She revealed that Cake Together makes up about 30-40% of their sales and praised the team’s willingness to help bakers. “Put aside the sales that they’ve been generating for us, they’ve helped us on occasion to source ingredients, packaging and more.”
Just like Gladys, the other bakers also experienced the team’s willingness to help out whenever they can.
To Frances, Cake Together’s emphasis on helping out the bakers can be seen through the effort they put in to organise offline events and promotional campaigns to bring the bakers to the spotlight.
Rising To The Occasion
Naturally, not all home-based bakers are bakers by profession.
A culinary arts graduate, Edwin unearthed his passion in baking when he found comfort in eating or curating desserts, and the ability to bring out smiles to many faces in which he said, “this is the right decision.”
Frances also shared a little about her background. She was originally a junior art director of an ad agency, but after being retrenched, she found herself working as a florist—and after that, in her own words, an ‘accidental baker’.
After finding it hard to hire the right people to decorate and bake, she took things into her own hands and enrolled herself in baking and cake decorating classes and the rest was a journey of self-improvement.
Jun Yang, one of the co-founders of Cake Together said that in the beginning, keeping things running smoothly was a hurdle. They had to navigate the puzzle of offering an effective and efficient way of handling the deliveries for their bakers, especially when more orders started to come in.
Since then, they’ve utilised an automatic fulfilment system that made life easier for everyone involved.
Brent then said that Cake Together has benefited from the pandemic, and they’ve surpassed their revenue projections for 2020, due to a surge in orders from customers sending cakes and treats to their loved ones as a pick-me-up during the lockdown.
Looking towards the future, they’re looking to increase brand awareness in Penang and Johor Bahru, and will aim to better promote bakers through tailored campaigns.
He also hopes that Cake Together will be able to diversify their offerings to be an ‘encapsulating birthday experience platform’.
“We want to make the special occasion as memorable and convenient as possible. The next time you think of buying cakes or gifts, you would think of buying them from locally talented bakers on Cake Together.”
- For more info on Cake Together click here.
- To join Cake Together as a baker, click here.
- Get 10% off your order with code: VULCANPOST10
- Find out what we’ve written about Cake Together in the past here.
Featured Image Credit: Cake Together