But what if the cake is already on their list, can you bring it anyway?
Bring a back-up cake, in case the first one is cooked or corked.
Wow. I’ve never heard of bringing your own cake. Especially something from a grocery store. Wine isn’t prepared by the restaurant, and I accept that some restaurants don’t want me to bring wine. But preparing food is the whole point of the restaurant.
I totally understand this: “He didn’t want anyone in the dining room to see it and think it came out of his kitchen,”
Being an ex Chef I can’t tell you how many cakes I’ve cut that the customer has brought in, it was really f**king annoying and time consuming. We charged a nominal fee at the time which was never enough.
I’ve never understood the mentality of a consumer that drives every cost down in a restaurant, which from what I see is what’s going on. If you can’t afford to eat out, eat and celebrate at home. Now, there are occasions and special circumstances (I’m not a total Ahole) so prearrange it with the restaurant as to be transparent and all the tension goes away. To me, even though I’m a paying customer and I should want things ‘my way’ isn’t the way I roll, I’m lucky to be able to dine in a restaurant and consider it a privilege to be able to eat out.
People bring cakes in all the time. Occasionally the cake is even good. Usually it sucks.
How do you celebrate a birthday/cake at a restaurant, I’ve never seen a menu with one on offer - so people bring their own, stick some candles on it and sing off-key. I’ve seen them bring out a modified desert with a candle stuck on it.
At least the people are in the restaurant generating it business rather than at home. Quite a regular thing here in Oz - at the family style restaurants. They’ll usually just give you a knife and some plates and you cut it yourself at the table.
Has no one here gotten married before? So called “cake cutting fees” or “plate and fork fees” are very common there. Admittedly that’s usually in a hotel/catering environment rather than restaurant, but the concept is straight forward.
The idea of bringing in a grocery store sheet cake to one of these places raises its own, separate questions.
Well, call the restaurant in advance and ask if they make a birthday cake in house or otherwise source it from a reputable local bakery. But it’s really about the cost. Some folks would rather spend $10-$20 on a bland, tasteless grocery store sheet cake and pretend it was celebratory rather than spend $50-$100 on a real cake that has flavor. It’s like people bringing Two Buck Chuck to a restaurant that allows BYOB.
Bruce
I allow both corkage and cakeage. With corkage sometime people bring in terrible wine, sometime great wine. With cakeage it is about the same, but happens far less. I never charge for cakeage. People are still eating and drinking. And they are customers and guests. I let people enjoy their lives.
Hotel/catering usually doesn’t provide much in the way of a fancy wedding cake, which often is a bespoke item from a special cake designer. I don’t think folks hiring a hotel are generally bringing sheet cake (although I’m sure it happens, especially if the hotel is the Motel 6 on US 59, in which case we should welcome everyone involved’s efforts to have reaosnable wedding expenses).
Depends - hotel, you’re probably right, but catering outfit that does a lot of weddings, they likely have their own ability to do something. I got married during peak cupcake, and we were going to go with cupcakes from an outside vendor, but when hit with $1.50/cupcake fee, we just went with caterer’s fancy cupcakes.
Only older cakes that are not currently available at retail outlets.
Well, for one thing, I don’t see ‘cake’ on many restaurant dessert lists - especially the better restaurants. So, I believe many people bring one for that reason alone.
hm, there’s no guarantee that restaurant knows how to bake a cake, so spending money isn’t a guarantee at all.
Maybe all of those cakes helped you realize that you were in the wrong line of work, so you should be thankful. Restaurants have the right to make their own policies concerning corkage or cakeage and how much to charge if they decide to permit BYOB or BYOC. Maybe you should buy your own place and to avoid the annoyance and time consuming cutting of customer-supplied cakes, just go out and buy mediocre cakes and sell them at a 300% mark-up over retail. After all, why would any customer object to or want to cut costs like that?
for my birthday I had chef make a cake. it was the best cake I’ve ever had. I even shared a piece with my wife.
Good for you Gary and hopefully your customers reward you for being hospitable.
Corkage, Cakage, whatever. Establish a policy that works for your business plan, stick with it, make your money, and don’t whine about it.
My SO did this once, but she wanted some bizarre complex “cake” like confection.
I just paid for the restaurants cake, and had them serve her thing (which wasn’t very good).
This is one area where I’d tilt more toward a restaurant saying NFW especially if they have a real pastry chef in house.
I think it’s a good bet that Fudgy the Whale won’t be on the menu at Per Se…