With all of her staff laid off and a high number of orders to deal with, a baker in Airdrie is shifting her focus during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to owner Debi Macleod,The Avenue Cakery and Bakeshoppe is still in business – offering delivery and curbside pick-up – but is prioritizing the baking of bread over sugary treats.
“We’re doing the best we can, making bread and cinnamon buns, so that we’re somewhat essential, because we’re borderline,” Macleod said. “Cupcakes and fancy cakes aren’t a necessity, so we’re making other stuff to kind of stay on the fence.
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“We have bars, breads and buns that are all popular, but the cupcakes are always the top seller, no matter what day of the week it is or when.”
Like virtually every other retail storefront in Airdrie, Avenue has been heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Macleod, every employee except herself has been either laid off or is, voluntarily, no longer working.
“Because we have such a small space, there’s no way we can’t work super tightly together,” she said. “We have staff with kids, so they’re safe at home doing their homeschooling, and then we have some immune-compromised staff, so it wasn’t going to be a good situation for us to have our staff here.
“So now it’s just me. I have my daughters come in and help me sometimes, but they’re volunteering their time.”
While the pandemic has resulted in most people being confined to their homes, the phone has still been ringing off the hook at the bakery, according to Macleod, with customers filing requests for cupcakes, birthday cakes and other baked goods throughout the day.
Due to the sheer volume of calls, she said, she has had to cancel, postpone or decline hundreds of orders.
“We’ve had days where the phone actually crashes,” she said. “We can’t call out and people can’t call in because there are so many phone calls on top of each other.”
With that in mind, she said she is requesting that people refrain from ordering extravagant cakes, which are time-consuming to make from scratch, and order bread or simple pastries instead.
“I usually have five to six bakers doing what I’m doing by myself right now, ” she said.
”I don’t have my cake decorators, so we’re just doing the basics and trying to keep up with that. We’re just trying to keep the doors open – that’s all. I’m not interested in making the fancy, frilly cakes right now. I don’t need to spend four or five hours on a cake when I can spend four or five hours making bread.”
Scott Strasser, AirdrieToday.com
Follow me on Twitter @scottstrasser19
