A Los Angeles bakery fell victim to a counterfeit check scam involving a $7,500 cupcake order.
Check fraud has surged 385% nationwide since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the US Treasury.
The bakery owner, Loria Stern, bought all the ingredients before realizing she was a victim.
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Checks now-a-days are just not worth the risk! Besides the potential for fraud – people who insist on paying by check will have a sinister reason why they can’t pay another way.
On one side, I have to hand it to Karly Pavlinac Blackburn for her brilliance, innovation, and originality in her job search. On the OTHER hand, I am particularly angry that I didn’t think of it first.
As Blackburn explained, with her mind set on a job at Nike, she decided to make a bold choice. A friend suggested that instead of submitting a job application the traditional way, she print her resume on top of a cake and send it to the Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. After some research, she decided to send the cake on the day she knew a party would be at the headquarters.
Blackburn, who lives in North Carolina, placed an order at Albertsons Grocery Store through Instacart. By good fortune, Denise Baldwin — a like-minded Instacart delivery driver — was the icing on top of the cake that her master plan needed.
“I knew navigating Nike’s large campus was a feat, but combining a giant party with tons of people on top of that adds another layer of complexity to this delivery,” Blackburn explained in her post on LinkedIn, which has raked in thousands of comments.
“I talked to Denise on the phone, and she said to me, ‘Karly, I know this is important to you, and I will do whatever IT takes to get this cake to where it needs to be,’” Blackburn wrote.
Speaking with TODAY, Ms. Blackburn explained how Ms. Baldwin (the driver) resolved to get the cake into the right hands, despite being asked to just leave the cake on a front desk. She made her way through Nike Headquarter’s 300-acre property with the sheet cake in hand.
She only had the name of the person Blackburn needed the delivery to reach, but neither knew the person’s exact location. According to Complex, the campus has over 75 buildings. Baldwin even enlisted the help of Security to assist with her mission of locating the executive’s office. After a bit of walking and searching, she got to the right office and found the person Blackburn was hoping to connect with.
She indicated her purpose to hand deliver the cake, and the very person Blackburn had hoped to see her resume and stand out among the presumed pile of candidates, now held the custom made cake in his hands. Mission accomplished. Even getting the executive to pose for a photo with the cake as her “proof of delivery”.
And now it was time to wait. Did the executive think Blackburn to be unique, innovative, most of all did he “read through the frosting” and think her a proper match for the company, based on that resume? Or did he think her to be too aggressive, a waste of valuable time for what seemed like a prank or publicity stunt? Would he be disturbed or even angry that her hired delivery person had been defiant to company rules and procedures, refusing to just leave the cake and instead choosing to interrupt one of the Higher Ups? This was NIKE after all. Known throughout the world, the Brand owns 1032 stores across the globe (as of July 2023) and in 2023 made $33.14 billion on footwear, another $15.57 billion in apparel and equipment, and $58 million dollars from their Global Brand Divisions.
And as of May 2023, NIKE employed 83, 700 people. Eighty three thousand and seven hundred. Think about that.
So, did NIKE call?
“I have a few meetings next week, so that’s exciting,” Blackburn explained. “Now that this has happened, there are a bunch of companies that are kind of involved in the process, so I’m just trying to figure out where I fit in, what’s the right fit…”
It seems the Covid scare is beginning to wind down. We are by no means out of the woods yet and certainly our hearts go out to those suffering a loss as a result of the pandemic. We were all affected in one way or another but it’s nice to see people celebrating again, planning birthdays, re-planning weddings and working (cautiously) towards the “new normal.” Here are some recent events we had the pleasure of catering desserts.
The “Non-Wedding Wedding Celebration of Love” Theme: Cannabis and Tie Dye
As businesses desperately try to re-coup some of their losses in these post pandemic months, prices for everything from gasoline to groceries seem to be on the rise at a frantic pace. Pandemic Postponed Weddings are slowly making a return and couples are scrambling to adjust their budgets from the original one set over a year ago.
Wedding cakes average $500-$800 for a traditional 3 tiered with minimal design, so why would anyone pay over than $2500 for a single slice of wedding cake? It would have to be covered in solid gold, or bear the emblem of the Royal Family to yield that price right?
Well, in all fairness, it did.
A slice of cake from the 1981 Royal Wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer has recently been sold at auction for the unexpected price of £1,850 ($2,565).
Weighing about 28 ounces, the slice comes from one of the 23 cakes made for the royal wedding, according to Dominic Winter Auctioneers, in Cirencester, western England. It was originally estimated to fetch between £300-£500 ($416-$693), but there was so much interest in the lead up to the sale that it was impossible to predict what it would sell for, auctioneer Chris Albury told CNN on Thursday.
“It really seemed to capture a lot of people’s imaginations, and wallets,” said Albury, adding: “£1,850 was very unexpected.” The cake slice features a coat-of-arms colored in gold, red, blue and silver, a silver horseshoe and leaf spray, as well as some white decorative icing.
It appears to be part of one of the cakes sent to royal staff and was given to Moyra Smith, who worked at Clarence House for the Queen Mother, the auctioneer said. The 40-year-old slice, which has been kept in plastic wrap in an old cake tin, was sold to Dominic Winter Auctioneers in 2008 on behalf of Smith’s family.
“It’s a good sales pitch for clingfilm,” said Albury. Aside from the white icing having dulled a bit, the cake has been well preserved, he added. “It’s an object that’s going to last,” said Albury.
The winning bidder is coming to collect the slice on the train from Leeds on Thursday, Albury added. While slices of cake from other royal weddings do regularly come up for sale, the fact that this item is such a large piece of one of the official cakes makes it stand out, said Albury.
“I’ve not seen anyone else trying to sell anything like this,” he said. “It’s quite a lump.” The auction also included printed Ceremonial and Order of Service programs for the wedding, which had an estimated worldwide television audience of more than 700 million people. The listing included a memorial Royal Wedding Breakfast menu and table seating program.
The auction came just a few months after Princess Diana’s sons agreed to loan her wedding dress to go on public display at Kensington Palace. A car Prince Charles gave Princess Diana as an engagement present also recently went up for auction, selling for more than £52,000 ($72,000).
Remember that the recommendation is to stay between three and six feet away from others to reduce your risk of spreading or contracting the virus. Here’s what you don’t want to do.
Shaking hands: No, not even with gloves on
Sorry, no super secret hand shake that you and your BFF have done since middle school
Chest Bump: You may as well be making out with your faces so close – don’t do it
Elbow bump: Remember that people are advised to cough and sneeze into their elbows
Hip bump: Remember your personal bubble!
Toe tap: Unless your legs are super long, we suggest leaving this one out
Hand grab with the semi hug and back slap:
Cheers with your glass: Celebrating is nice, but you don’t want to risk getting someone’s saliva on your glass, or vice versa
Channel your inner toddler and blow kisses (without the spittle)
Give air high fives like you used to do in school (from 3 feet away of course)
Air hugs can still be comforting (same as above)
Be calm and namaste on
Bring out the finger guns and a wink
Devise a secret greeting dance with your friends
Use sign language to say hello (or create your own hand language)
Even if you regularly sanitize your hands, the virus can spread through bodily fluids from coughing, kissing, spitting, even heavy breathing that propels vaporized moisture into the air. All you have to do is breathe it in or get it on something and rub your mouth, eyes or nose to complete the transfer.
So remember to stay safe out there. Expand your personal space bubble – it doesn’t just protect you, it helps keep others from getting ill too.
When buying wedding desserts, throw tradition out the window
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — On your wedding day, you can have your cake and eat it too.
For our next episode of Weddings 101, we visit two Central New York bakeries to learn what’s trendy in the world of wedding cakes and desserts, what to expect at a cake tasting, and how much cakes cost.
The Gingersnap Bakery in Phoenix, N.Y. is known for multi-tiered wedding cakes, elaborate fondant work and handmade sugar flowers. Owner Kelsie Mack started working in restaurants and bakeries when she was 15, and graduated from the Culinary Institute of America.
When designing a wedding cake, Mack first schedules a meeting about six months before the wedding to hear the couple’s vision. It’s a multi-step process. Even after the meetings, planning and sketching, it will still take a week to bake, assemble, frost and display the cake.
Gingersnap Bakery’s stacked cakes start at $4.95 per slice. Extras like fondant work and sugar florals take extra time (and cost extra money). Dessert displays vary widely, she said, ranging anywhere from $3 to $7 per person.
Mack says big cakes (three to five tiers) are still the bulk of her business, but dessert displays are “more interactive and can look grander.”
“People go crazy if you do a small-tiered cake, surrounded by cupcakes, cookies, dessert shooters, French macarons and brownies on different tiered stands,” she said.
That’s exactly what my fiancé and I wanted: a small cake with mini desserts. We met up with our friends at the nearby bakery The Sweet Praxis Bake Lab for our custom tasting, and tried every flavor combination we could possibly handle (before the sugar crash hit).
Swiss meringue buttercream and raspberry compote? A definite winner. Peanut butter and lemon? Well, we learned our lesson. Sweet Praxis cake tastings cost between $30 and $80, depending on the level of customization.
“Some people still use cake toppers, but right now, we’re seeing a big trend in topping wedding cakes with fresh flowers,” said Walls.
Walls also said one classic tradition — freezing the top tier of your wedding cake to eat on your one-year anniversary — isn’t as popular as it used to be.
“We’d be happy to duplicate your cake in miniature form, so it’s fresh a year after the wedding,” Walls said. “Then you can eat it on your anniversary and relive those memories, without freezer burn. A year-old cake is just not ideal.”
Wedding cakes vary widely in price, based on tiers and customization. For example, a 8-inch multi-colored palette cake with raspberry compote/chocolate ganache filling and vanilla buttercream frosting would cost $90 at The Sweet Praxis and serve 28-40 guests.
That said, a two-tiered Sweet Praxis cake with a 6-inch top and 8-inch base, would also serve up to 40 guests, but it would cost $230 because of decorative macarons, gold leaf and meringues.
The Sweet Praxis offers a wide variety of miniature desserts, ranging from $1 to $2 each. Couples can order brioche doughnuts, cookies or cookie sandwiches, cream puffs, lemon drops, truffles, buckeyes, pie bites, tart-lettes, bundt-lettes, and macarons to surround their wedding cake display, or even replace it.
Walls says it’s best to plan for 2-4 mini servings per guest. If you’re expecting 150-200 guests, you can easily spend $1,000 to $2,000 on mini desserts alone.
In the end, every baker says the same thing: pick the flavors and fillings you love, not what you think your guests will love. “You’re taking the first bite,” Walls said. “The cake should be your thing, for you to enjoy eating together. Especially if you’re doing mini desserts for everyone else.”
At Nibblerz, we couldn’t agree more!Check out our many designs of Dessert Tables from the small reception to the lavish spread, we got you covered Las Vegas. It’s about time New York caught on :).
Pardon the obvious play on words there , I couldn’t resist. I imagine there will be a lot of that circulating over the next year.. bloggers such as myself, late night comedians, TV comedys, commercials… Yes, I can see it clearly (Ok, I’ll stop).
My vision for Nibblerz has actually NOT changed. I still “strive to surprise “and dazzle you with creative designs and service based on southern hospitality in a big city world. You’ll never hear we can’t do something. Outside of anything that might border on a felony that is.
Recently I had the pleasure of assisting a client surprise her partner with a luscious dessert spread set up in their hotel room prior to their arrival on New Years Eve. Party Hats, liquor-filled treats, and a bottle of pink champagne were among the items that also included New Years Eve themed cake pops, decadent dark chocolate parfaits and Chocolate covered OREOS that featured images of the couple. After some challenges with the front desk to gain access to the room, I pulled a few strings (and maybe a credit card) and we were in. Like I said, nothing we wont do to pull off the ultimate surprise.
What happens in Vegas….. 🙂 Happy New Year all… make every day count.
Flower walls might have been the hottest thing to have at your wedding in 2014, but there’s something just as beautiful — but way more delicious blowing up right now. Meet the donut wall: They’ve been popping up in our Instagram feeds over the last few months and we couldn’t be happier about it. Here, the five reasons why you should have one at your wedding (or birthday party, or office party … you get the idea).
1. They make the perfect dessert bar backdrop.
2. They are begging for donut puns to be made.
3. They are the best thing to happen to pegboard since Julia Child.
4. Everyone from the flower girl to your grandpa will love it.
5. But the best part is, donut walls are adaptable for any style of wedding. For example, they can be super romantic.
We’re here! And so are you, welcome! Please take a moment and join the newsletter to be added to our list. And then watch your inbox for FREE STUFF GIVEAWAYS and fun and different ways to win some awesome gifts for yourself or to send to family and friends. We wont bombard you with emails because we know how valuable your time is, so sign up and feel the love only a little nibble can bring.
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