PHONE PROBLEMS...AGAIN!!

So for the third time in the last two weeks our local phone service provider has accidentally turned off our phone lines. We've been working with them diligently to schedule a move date on the new store and they just can't seem to get things right! We are being told that things won't be in place until February 6th, yet magically today, the 28th our phones have been turned off. Why? I have no clue, I can only guess that they have once again messed things up!!!!
I'd just like to apologize to all of our customers for this inconvenience and let you know that I am painstakingly talking with the phone company to get this straightened out. This is no easy task...I'm sure I'll spend my day talking to several people at the phone company and listening to several different reasons as to why this has happened and wait several hours to get it straightened out. I may go crazy!!!!!!!
If you are trying to reach us today, you may call the Beavercreek store. They can always take orders for any location and answer any questions. Thank you for your patience!!!

New Name, New Location, Same Tasty Treats

The big news these days is that we have decided to change our name! If you have been in the store or been on our website you may have already noticed this change. So now to answer the big question. WHY?

Everyone wants to know why we changed our name. Simply put we wanted to re-brand the business and create a fresh new look that will appeal to all kinds of people all over the country, and we felt that this was the best time to do that. It wasn't an easy decision to make and we are making many steps to ensure that all of our customers will still be able to find us! And to respond to or answer many of the questions/ comments out there:

How will people find you? As I said above we are taking many steps to ensure that everyone can find us. We will have two listings in the phone book- one under "ele' cake co" and one under "A Taste of Elegance." (Note the "A"- many people complain that they can't find us in the white pages....usually because they are looking under "Taste"). We are handing our flyers with all of our daily cake orders. You can continue to go to atasteofelegance.net and be connected to the new site. And much much more! Don't worry, the last thing we want is to lose all of our customers!

You should never change your name. That's a dumb move!- Deciding to change our business name was a well thought out move. We have made many successful business decisions in the past and we hope that this one proves to be successful as well. We have some amazing plans for the future of our business and we think that this was a step in the right direction for those future plans.

What does ele' mean?- ele' is really just the first 3 letters of elegance so we like to say it means elegance. It does have a French accent mark over the e, although as far as we know ele' does not mean anything in French or any other language.

How do you pronounce ele'?- it really just sounds like "el-ay" or when you say it quickly..."LA".

Are you going to open more stores?- Contrary to some rumors, at this time we do not have any plans to open more stores. For now, we'd like to expand our business within, meaning that we'd like to offer more goods and services to our current customers. The new location will have a full service coffee bar and a children's party room and classroom. We are also working on shipping our cakes and treats nationwide with online ordering.

So that's the name change in a nutshell! We are very excited about the opening of our new location and the launch of our new name. We are continually trying to better ourselves and the business. The new location is truly for our customers and our employees. Many customers complain when they can't get a cake in less than 24 hours when the fact is, we just can't produce any more cakes during certain times of the year and certain days of the week. It's not that we don't want your business or don't want to make your cake! On our busiest weekend this year we sold 1,362 cakes! That's a lot of cake and we truly pushed the limits in all areas to get these done. Our cake decorators were pretty much required to work 18 hour shifts and we were probably breaking fire codes because we had cakes in every open space, walkway, nook and cranny possible. On weekends like that we have customers complain when they can't get a cake, employees complain because they're tired and overworked and we just can't win! We hope that the new space will allow us to meet the customer's needs and give our employees plenty of space to get the work done without having to work around the clock! Of course we've also given them plenty of other perks like a luxurious breakroom and their own parking!

So at some point I started rambling! We hope you like the new name and we hope to see in the store very soon!!!!!

THINGS ARE FINALLY MOVING!

These pictures are about 10 days old and already outdated! Much more work has been completed since I took these. They should start working on the windows this week as well as the outer facade. Now that the studs for the interior walls are going up, it's fun to walk around inside and see where all of the different rooms are going to be.

The most commonly asked questions these days: "When is the new place going to be open?"

The answer: "The building should be complete by the end of December and we plan to move in early January!"

That's right around the corner!!!!!

Cool Cakes!

For those of you that don't know it, we can make some really cool cakes. Check out these recent ones! If you'd like a custom cake let us know, but make sure you give us plenty of notice. These cakes can sometimes take hours to make and we can only do so many each weekend.

I actually made this cake for my own 30th birthday. I'm a huge Dave Matthews Band fan and wanted to make a fun DMB cake. These are edible copies of actual ticket stubs.

This was for a bridal shower with a Fiesta type of theme.


I love ocean cakes! This was so fun to make!

Bengals Helmet. At the last minute we thought it would be fun to add an image of Chad Johnson. The birthday boy loved it!

Karen is Awesome!!

Our cake decorating manger, Karen Thomson competed in the Pillsbury/ General Mills creative cake decorating competition in Las Vegas on September 9th & 10th. She came in Third Place overall with first place in the custom designs category and second place in the wedding cake category. She completed 13 cake designs overall including a 3 tier wedding cake, a 3D sculpted cake, a rolled fondant cake, 3 floral designs, 6 custom designs, and a creative surprise design. She competed regionally for the first time this past January and made it to National's. Not a bad finish for a first timer! We are so proud of her but not surprised! We're sure to see her in many more competitions in the future...maybe the Food Network???

(This is a bad picture but Karen's actually holding a trophy here!)

CONGRATULATIONS KAREN!!!!!

3 Walls So Far!

Sorry I haven't posted anything in quite sometime! This summer has been an extremely busy one but so far the new store has 3 brick walls!!! The electric and plumbing is being run into the ground and we expect the slab to be poured any day now. I will post some more photos as soon as I can get them off my really slow memory card.

A Taste of Elegance is also going through many changes. Yesterday all of our employees attended a seminar on "The Art of Giving Great Service." We brought in the best to help turn our employees into "the best." A small deli in Michigan called Zingermans has pretty much mastered the art of service and they offer training through an extension of their business called ZingTrain. You see, when Melody and I opened ATOE we knew how to give good service. We opened the business because we loved doing what we do and we wanted to please other people. With such rapid growth it has been hard to keep up with getting the work done, running the business, and always training our employees properly. It's so easy to just find a warm body and throw them out there because you so desperately need someone right now! But we are learning and we hope to see an improvement in the service we offer and we hope you do to! We'd like to soon implement a mystery shopper program using our current and new customers so that we can measure our level of service. If you're interested...let me know!

Aside from our service we are working on creating some great new products. Don't worry...the recipes aren't changing...we're just going to add some new flavors and some fun sweet treats to the menu. We just have a lot of space in the new store and we had to come up with something to fill that space! Why not more treats? Plus they're fun to make. One day I'd like to have my own "test kitchen". I could play with new flavors and ideas all the time if I didn't have anything else to do!

GRADUATION IS OVER...ALMOST!

YEAH!!!! Graduation is fading out for the very last time at this location! For the past two weekends we have been able to complete 825 special order cakes! Our employees have been hard at work and we could see that on this week's payroll. We had employees with anywhere from 15 to 44 hours of overtime!

For those of you who don't know, Graduation is our big holiday. Well it's really not a holiday but that's what it feels like to us. For the past few years we have been cramped and on top of one another just trying to get the cakes done. You can't move in the cake decorating area without bumping into another person or a rack of cakes or buckets of icing, etc. We're looking forward to the massive work space that we'll have at the new location! We're hoping that the space will not only help the work space situation, but it will allow us to take more orders so those of you who may have been turned away when trying to order a cake will hopefully not get turned away!