CakeDrop

Idea

Introduction

If you’ve ever worked in an office, you’ll be familiar with the rush of excitement after an all-staff email saying there’s cake in the break room.

Cake is a much-loved part of office culture and the centrepiece to every workplace celebration.

The problem is sourcing good quality cake for the office is a real hassle.

Many bakeries require notice for celebration cake orders. Those with off-the-shelf options have limited stock. Delivery to the office is expensive. Collection is time-consuming. The entire process is inconvenient, costly and stressful for office managers.

The result? Office moments are too often celebrated with underwhelming, mass-produced supermarket cake.

That’s why we launched CakeDrop - to make office celebrations as effortless, exciting and delicious as they should be. CakeDrop is an employee perk that saves office managers time, brings teams together, and provides a new and lucrative route to market for local artisan bakeries.

Substantial accomplishments to date

2017 - 2018 - Validating the concept

In 2017, Nicola and Anna launched CakeDrop as a side project with just £13K of personal funds. The duo developed a website, secured a CakeHub, built a CakeTrike, onboarded 8 partner bakeries and began testing the concept with a small customer base. After positive feedback from early customers, CakeDrop raised £10K on Kickstarter to purchase an e-bike to make operations more efficient. Early customers became repeat purchasers and new customers were acquired. The business was featured in British Baker Magazine, City AM and Business Daily.

2018 - 2019 - Gaining traction

Remaining lean, CakeDrop steadily grew its customer base with word-of-mouth as its main acquisition channel. Customers remained loyal, with an 84% repeat purchase rate on packages. Anna and Nicola continued to work in other employment whilst planning the next stage of growth for CakeDrop.

2019-Present - Preparing to scale

Nicola and Anna set out CakeDrop's strategy for growth and welcomed experienced entrepreneur and business consultant, Fran Garcia, to the board to guide CakeDrop through its next phase. In March 2020, both founders left other employment to commit full-time to CakeDrop and, with a full-time team in place, the business saw its highest monthly revenues. In the wake of Covid-19, CakeDrop quickly adapted its business to provide cake by post which has proved a great success with companies wanting to treat staff at home.

Monetisation strategy

CakeDrop sells 'packages' of 5, 12, 25 or 50 cakes, which appear as credit on a customers' online account for them to schedule for delivery as-and-when required.

CakeDrop purchases cake from suppliers at a wholesale rate and builds in up to a 25% margin. CakeDrop is able to offer more competitive prices than a customer would gain by dealing directly with bakeries or by purchasing through food delivery platforms, due to its bulk purchasing model.

In March 2020, CakeDrop also launched a new range of postal treats for nationwide delivery, including brownies, blondies, cookies and cake pots. These are also purchased at a wholesale rate from our partner bakeries and sold at a margin. The margins on brownies and blondies is 25%, on cookies is 15%, and on cake pots is 10%. As this is a new offering which has been set up very quickly, there is significant potential to improve these margins by increasing order volumes of packaging, negotiating wholesale costs with bakers and using cheaper delivery solutions which currently require higher parcel volumes to utilise.

*Source: unaudited management accounts

Use of proceeds

Product development

We've identified branded cakes, bespoke cakes and cupcakes as a new growth area for CakeDrop. There is also appetite from our customers for ‘add on’ products such as candles, cards, balloons, gift items. We will use the investment to open up these new revenue streams.

Marketing

Paid marketing is a huge untapped opportunity for CakeDrop. We will use the proceeds to fuel a 12 month multichannel marketing activity that targets office managers, HR, PAs and EAs.

Tech

We will continue to improve the CakeDrop platform to drive more traffic to the site, convert more users and make it even easier for offices to use.

Team

The two founders will take a small monthly salary. A team assistant will be employed to help manage increased orders.

Please note that a portion of the investment reflected in this campaign equal to £30,000 was received by the Company 3 months prior to the launch of the investment round on Seedrs and the Company has started putting some of this to use.

Please note that any discounts, rewards and/or offers listed by a company in its campaign are subject to the terms and conditions applied by that company. It is the company’s responsibility to honour such discounts, rewards and/or offers and Seedrs does not take any responsibility for them.