"bumblebee4451" > wrote in message
oups.com...
> I would not be able to open a bakery - I have no skill or interest
> (like to eat the goods though). Its a mystery to me how long this
> bakery survived. I guess someone liked it.
>

I think I know a least part of how a bad bakery survives. First, most
people don't bake, never baked, and grew up in a home where no one baked.
The only baked goods most people eat come from industrial bakers (Hostess
Twinkies, Wonder Bread), supermarket bakery departments run by people who
couldn't make it running a check-out lane, or from boxes. For these people,
it is a treat to use refrigerated cookie dough for "homemade" cookies rather
than eating factory made cookies. These are the same people who eat Chef
Boyardee spaghetti and Spam and think that a meal at the Olive Garden is
authentic Italian cuisine. The second reason that a bad bakery can survive
is because it is cheap. When you make your baked goods from mixes and use
giant buckets of icing, it keeps the costs down. People who think that a
cake from Wal-Mart and a cake from a high-end bakery have to be the same,
won't pay three times the Wal-Mart price at the high-end bakery. After all,
a cake is a cake, right? Therefore, there is a demand for inferior goods
and an unwillingness to pay for quality items. It takes a large
metropolitan area to support a quality bakery. You can see from the things
that get posted here how much people like crap made with CoolWhip, cake
mixes, Jell-O, pudding mix, canned pie filing, and so on. These people
aren't going to pay $35 for a 10 inch cake made with butter, fresh eggs,
cream and filled with expensive fruit, and hand decorated. I don't even
bother making good stuff to send to work on "food days." I just tell my SO
to stop at the grocery store and pick up something. That is a "win win"
situation because it costs less than making something good, and it supplies
people with a baked goods that meets their expectations.