Vegetable Soup

We ran out of Vegetable Soup early today. A potential, and likely repeat customer was unhappy and left with nothing but her upset.
This is a tough part of a new business. We want to have everything that people want, especially what is on the menu(!), all the time. And we have no history, week to week is coming, month to month is almost possible, season to season, same day sales -- all are in our future, hopefully.
Colder weather = more soup, obvious and doable, however -- how much of what kind? should we try a new chowder this week or next? to keep it totally fresh and tasty, we need to serve it in a few days time -- a lot to learn and one of the reasons why we at the BR really appreciate the feedback and the supportive attitude of you, our customers.
Thank you all and I do apologize for those times we are out of something it would seem we should always have extra on hand -- we are learning about your tastes, your eating patterns and how to mold our kitchen to meet them to the best of our ability.
I am very sorry that someone left today unhappy because of the missing soup, we will be back on track with Veg, Black Bean and our chowder and a special soup tomorrow. Stew is still in the planning stages.

1st Day Afternoon Tea

We served our first tea today and the crowd was small, the reception was positive and we hope the service will grow over the next weeks and month. 

As a reminder -- 2 seatings:  3pm & 4:45pm --reservations required.

Cupcakes for the Cause: Oct 20 - 26 - final tally

880 cupcakes purchased.  We have a check for $550. ready to send to the Cancer Care for Kids organisation.

Thank you all for your generosity in participating with us.

Next year 1000 should be "a piece of cake".

Cupcakes for the Cause: Oct 20 - 26

You have purchased 749 cupcakes between Monday, Oct 20th and Saturday, Oct 25th. 

Thank you and we look forward to making a final push tomorrow!

Cupcakes for the Cause: 20th - 26th October, 2008

This is the week each autumn (for the last 5 years) that Cancer Care for Kids has asked bakeries nationwide to donate a portion of proceeds from their cupcake sales to Cancer Care.

Between Monday morning, October 20th and 6 pm October 23rd - you, our customers, have purchased 525 cupcakes.

Thank you for your generosity and I know that Cancer Care for Kids will be appreciative when we reach the end of the week and send off our check to them

Can we make it to 1000 cupcakes by the end of day on Sunday?

How did we come up with the name?

There is no fancy story behind the name. Bob and I spent time brainstorming names and with our first list in hand, we did a bit of test marketing. No clear winners. Back to the drawing board -- Bob became enamoured with the name: The Baker's Peel. Test market result: "What is that?" "What does it mean?" -- for those of you who fall in that camp - a baker's peel is the tool used to take hot breads from the oven!
Some of my best ideas tend to surface when I stop "trying" and let them come. The Blue Rooster came to me just that way. I believe it surfaced as a compilation of many of my favorite things -- the color blue (I love it) the bit of European influence of the cockerel and so we went to the test market with The Blue Rooster. The response for the most part was --- a smile, a nod, a positive "ummm". And so we took it to a wider audience and the response was similar.
Now, what I was asked then was -- what is the genesis of the name -- what is the story, why. You now have the actual story.

The newsletter

Thanks to the many of you who sent favorable comments on the newsletter. We will continue to publish that once every 2-3 months. In the last edition we included a recipe and we are likely to do that regularly -- comments about recipes would be most welcome.