Cake deliveries – should you get a signature?

Cake deliveries

Should you get a signature?

When dealing with cake deliveries to a venue – how do you prove your creation was delivered safely?

Are you delivering to a site – where the purchaser is not present? Do you allow the catering staff or hotel management to ‘sign it off’.

What about taking a picture of the cake in situ proving that you left it safely and perfectly stacked. Cake deliveries can be a bit of a challenge and it is best to be mindful of what can be done to limit the challenges.

What could go wrong?

I have heard some horrendous tales of cakes being knocked after the creator has left. And this causes a huge fight over the balance of money that is due.

What about getting a signature from someone to confirm safe receipt? And upon what will they write their signature? How are you going to look professional? For cake deliveries – venues would expect to have to sign for safe receipt, so it would not be unexpected.

Hot kitchens!

I had a cake sent to the hot kitchens by the catering staff – fortunately this was collected from me by the buyer., so was her responsibility by this time. So at least the purchaser could confirm that it was upright when she collected it.

Sadly the caterers thought it ideal to put the cake next to the hot ovens in summer time. At which point is tilted over. But I can at least declare that one as ‘Not my fault’.

Can you make cake deliveries less stressful?

The thing is with delivering to a venue with no buyer present, you could be leaving yourself wide open to a final dispute.

And what if the customer decided that there was something ‘wrong’ with the cake after you left. Perhaps as a way of getting out of the final payment due. (Just saying…some people are crafty)

But it did leave me with the question. If a cake decorator was delivering an order with the buyer absent, what is the best thing to do?

Parcel Force ask for proof of delivery by signature. Perhaps we need to as well.

So what could you do – about your deliveries, when the host is absent? Could you do anything better than you currently do? And would getting the order approved by signature before even starting to bake really help too?

Just a thought!

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