September 21, 2015 - 2:14pm
We are launching an online platform for micro bakeries & cake makers. What do you guys think?
Hi Everyone,
We are currently in the final stages of development for a new online platform which easily links micro - bakeries & baking enthusiasts with customers in their local area. We desperately need feedback from actual bakers to make sure we provide you guys with the best possible service so please can you fill in our online survey, which you can take by clicking the following link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BakersFinal.
Any feedback from you will really help & be greatly appreciated! Please also drop us a message if you would like some more information. We are really excited about this & would love to hear from you!
Thanks so much from everyone here at AirBake.
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If you don't already know your typical user, you're late to the party. I suspect this is simply a device to harvest pre-qualified email addresses.
g
Even if that were true, being late to the party isn't really a problem. It's completely legitimate to want to know that your assumptions are correct and perhaps find out a thing or two you didn't know, that just good business.
I would say they need a better name though, only uberBake would have been more obvious.
Agree on the obviousness of the name!
Also, the survey doesn't require an email address in the sense that email harvesters would aim to capture the email address at all costs. The last question asks you to provide one as a courtesy to update you with future events, but you can equally type in "no thanks not interested" as an actual email. It's just surveymonkey.
EDIT: Not to advertise for them or anything, but also see https://twitter.com/airbakeuk and http://www.airbake.co.uk/ - if it's an email harvesting scam, they're doing it the wrong way
Hi ccsdg,
Firstly thank you for taking the time to complete our survey. I can assure you we are not an email harvesting scam. To be honest with you we are relatively new to the growing baking industry in the UK & actually the online start-up world too. So right now we are just trying to get as much feedback about our idea from people like yourselves so that when we launch we can provide the best possible service for both bakers & customers.
We are pitching for investment next week Wednesday so I will keep you informed on how we get on.
And thank for suggestion re: the survey.
With kindest regards
The AirBake team
where their clientele can contact them and order from. If you are new to an area a quick search will turn up all the local bakeries to choose from. I'm not sure what you are adding to the party.?
they are talking about micro-bakeries (Which I would assume to be a bakery with no storefront, or a very small one, but some professional equipment) and home bakers who turn out small amounts of goods and maybe sell at Farmers Markets.
Sort of like Uber, where people use their cars instead of professional taxi/limo drivers.
Is that interesting to people? It might be, although the handoff sounds iffy. I would not want someone coming to my home, and I don't see how a small order is worth delivery
Hi dabrownman,
Thank you for getting touch.
We are hoping to help independent micro-bakeries & baking enthusiasts easily promote there small businesses by creating a profile on our site for free. Customers will then be able to open on app on their phone or go onto our website & very quickly find speciality bakers in their local area who can provide anything they might need for any occasion.
We hope to be adding lots of bespoke cakes & other baked goods to everyone's parties.
With kindest regards
The AirBake team
You've gotta think smaller, micro bakeries are usually operated out of someone's home, most of the world doesn't allow you to sell directly from your doorstep so you don't have walk-in customers. I imagine what AirBake is going for is essentially Etsy for home bakers. If they get the marketing right that could be tremendously valuable to tiny operations but Etsy doesn't have the locality problem to deal with, shipping non-perishable goods is pretty easy.
Interesting that the internet vies to fill every nook and cranny with information - that a high percentage are abandoned because the venture failed to have any cash flow associations. And the world is left with a dangler of old, stale information.
The other portion is that it misses the way the market works for hand built bread products. Most sales are on a first name familiar basis ancient by all modern terms and may prove resistant to online modification if at all. "Fresh on bake day" just does not ship well in terms of maintaining quality at the delivery point - a fact that plagues instituting modern communications and delivery methods to engage a larger market space.
Another aspect is that many bake on direct delivery to their clients such as restaurants and coffee shops etc or into the farmers markets where the best advertising is supplying warm morsels with butter and jam on a cold morning. That this could only be piped over the internet but alas it is not.
For established shops with regular hours it might prove to be a handy form for trawling in new customers that were not aware of their existence - then word of mouth takes over - the best ever form of advertising.
So, for now, I'll pass...,
Wild-Yeast
I took the survey, just to see what it addressed. Given that I responded in the negative to the question about wanting to bake for sale, I was mildly surprised to see that the remaining questions all assumed that the answer had been yes, rather than no.
This is a concept that could be quite beneficial to some microbakeries. While I agree that most start by word of mouth references, not every aspiring baker has a large circle of acquaintances. AirBake could lead more potential customers to them. If you are someone who likes good bread but don't know how or want to bake your own, how will you find a microbakery if your circle of acquaintances and the bakery's circle of acquaintances don't overlap? In that case, AirBake could provide the linkage between baker and customer. AirBake could also save the microbakery the expense/distraction of putting up and maintaining a website of their own.
Is there a business model in this that lets AirBake make money without being a burden to the baker or customers? Beats me. I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss the concept, though. Most of us didn't see Facebook or Twitter or Uber or other new ideas as being feasible or profitable, either.
Paul
Hi PMcCool,
Thank you so much for your positive comment. We are working really hard to ensure that AirBake is a huge success & although we are at the early stages of our journey we are excited about the opportunities out there.
We hope that our platform will help people do what they love & even make some extra money doing while doing it.
We are pitching for investment next week so we would be happy to keep you informed about our progress.
Thanks again & kindest regards,
The AirBake Team