Cake! magazine by Australian Cake Decorating Network August 2018 Cake! Magazine | Page 54

You experienced amazing success
with your business in its first few
years - 7 outlets, 35 staff, a yearly
turnover of over 1 million GBP. What do
you believe was the reason for such
incredible success so early on?
out to be one a year for the next 7
years. But the first one was when
the Royal Yacht Britannia was to be
decommissioned and the Queen had
her last voyage in the Western Isles
of Scotland. The cake was a highland
scene with a rowing boat which had
the Queen and Prince Philip in the
boat with two page boys. When Lord
Linlithgow collected the cake he
laughed, but said that we had better
not have the Queen rowing! We had
great feedback and learned that our
lemon drizzle cake was her favourite.
Success is one of those words that
means different things to different
people. We were able to grow the
business quickly because we knew
that there was a market for what we
had to offer. We were carried away by
Jenners, a major department store in
Edinburgh, who had ambition for us to
open in many more stores. However,
we quickly realised that we were
not happy as we were not fulfilling
our dreams. So, much to everyone’s
surprise, we decided to sell the
business to concentrate on teaching,
which is where my heart lies.
Have you experienced any cake
disasters?
Tell us about how Paul Bradford
Sugarcraft School came about.
When I first started the business
was named Paul Bradford Designer
Cakes, which is where our web
address originated from. When we
grew the business we renamed to
Truly Scrumptious Designer Cakes, but
when we sold the trading name, we
kept the same company number and
renamed to Paul Bradford Sugarcraft
School. At the time I was running a lot
of attended courses and it was soon
after that we decided to go down the
online tutorials route, but just kept the
same name.
You’ve just released CakeFlix. What
can you tell us about this new facet of
your business?
We have been releasing weekly
online tutorials for 7 years now and
have noticed a change in the past 12
months. We surveyed our members
and it became clear that what we were
offering was different to what many
were wanting. With those insights we
worked out that our audience wanted
more live features, more techniques
and shorter courses. I also wanted to
open the site up for home contributors
to have their work published on the
site and to include products where
there are videos supporting how to
use the items (which we don’t take
any commission for). Putting all that
together, it made sense to change
our name, re-brand and launch a new
concept and so CakeFlix was born.
It’s taken 8 months to secure the key
domains and trademark, but we are
excited by the new concept and hope
that visitors will enjoy it too.
Are there any challenges in being a
male in a largely female-dominated
industry?
It can be an advantage, certainly when
I was younger and slimmer!
Your online tutorials are among the
best in the industry. What goes in to
creating each one?
Thank you. We learned early on that
it’s best to make the tutorials as live
as possible, leaving in mistakes and
not over-rehearsing, which is just as
well because I hate an auto-cue. I
usually dream about the design the
night before and we usually film a
course in one long day. The filming
guy types up the course notes and
tools and ingredients as we go along.
The cake needs to be photographed
straight away, then the clips head off
to the editor. This is where it takes time
- it’s usually 2-3 days to edit a feature
length course. Once that’s done, we
have to create the course on the site,
add the videos and course notes
then make sure that it’s ready to be
published. Just before it’s published,
Mum checks through the draft version
for any mistakes and to make sure any
swearing has been removed!
What has been your proudest cake
moment so far?
That’s easy - I was asked to make
a cake for the Queen, which turned
One big one springs to mind. We had
a large transit van for our deliveries
and our driver, who had only started
that week, set off with 8 wedding
cakes in the back with a planned out
delivery route. A couple of hours later
he phoned me to say that he had had
to put the brakes on quickly and some
of the cakes had been damaged. He
didn’t have a smart phone to take a
photo and I was in the middle of a
wedding appointment on a Saturday
morning. I calmly (I think!) told him to
return to the shop. I called in all the
staff to help out and when the cakes
came back they were a complete
mess. However, everyone pulled
together, David phoned around the
venues explaining the problem and
finding out the latest delivery time to
get the priority order. By the skin of our
teeth we managed to fix or replace all
the cakes and have them out to their
venues on time. The next week the
driver filled the diesel van with petrol!
You’ve created cakes for many
celebrities and royals. Have you had
any ‘fan’ moments while creating or
delivering these cakes?
Biggest fan moment was not long
after we started. A customer had
ordered a cake, but we had no idea
who it was for. It was mid-week and
we were getting on with the routine
in the shop and we heard the door
go so Angela, one of the shop staff,
walked out to greet the customer. It
was none other than Barry Gibb who
had come into the shop to thank me
for making his birthday cake. He was
lovely, had a short conversation then
he left and we were all left thinking,
did that really happen! Closest miss
was Prince Albert of Monaco, who we
missed by 10 minutes despite being
driven at speeds matched by the
Monte Carlo Grand Prix around the
streets of Monaco to get the cake to
him. We settled for a tour of the private
quarters of the palace while drinking
his champagne.
What’s next for PBSS?
With CakeFlix set up to take over the
tutorial side of things I have set up
Paul Bradford Training, which keeps
my courses separate to the tutorials
side of things. Effectively PBSS now
splits to become CakeFlix and Paul
Bradford Training.
more information
Paul Bradford Training / CakeFlix
www.facebook.com/CakeflixOfficial
www.cakeflix.com
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