Cake sales Part 1

Automatically generated from the audio, so it may not be perfectly word-for-word.

Hi, welcome to the PTA Podcast. My name is Yvonne, and I've been a PTA volunteer for a few years now. But I'm just one of thousands of volunteers up and down the country who all want to make a difference to their schools. PTAs are becoming even more crucial in UK schools to boost budgets, and I find it fascinating to talk to other volunteers about the different approaches they take. So please join me in this podcast to share information, generate ideas, debate issues, and celebrate success. And I hope that you can take something away for your PTA today. This is episode 32, and today we're going to talk about one of the foundations of fundraising, the humble cake sale. But before we get on to that, I just wanted to ask you: did you have a good half term? It is back to school day for my family today. Everybody got off reasonably well this morning, I'm pleased to say. Then my son happens to have a 10-sided dice, so uh you can roll the dice, the trickle treat comes along, they roll the dice to see which sock they get, and some of the socks have tricks in, and some of the socks have treats in. So um they played the spooky sock game, and we also provided we've done this for a few years now. We provide some spooky drinks, so we provided worm juice this year, and we basically got a punch bowl and filled it with lemonade, and then we made a couple of different coloured jellies. So I think we did orange and black cherry. Uh, we made those up separately, then kind of um broke them up um into pieces and put them in the lemonade, and it's quite good because the bubbles in the lemonade sort of make the jelly move around a little bit in the in the drink, and then we just ladled those out. I've I got some disposable wine glasses, um, so they look a bit like goblets um to have the worm juice in, and we hung some um um like sweets shaped like worms, you know, like those snake sweets um on the bowl, so it looked like they were just sort of dripping into it, and then and then the other thing we did, which wasn't as popular, um, was a shot of snot. So again, we bought a lime jelly, so we set it in the fridge, and then we used a fork to fork through it until it was all broken up. And what happens when you do that to a jelly is the consistency of it is just like snot, it's disgusting, and it's bright green, it looks just like it, and um, but it tastes like lime jelly, it's really nice. So we put out some little shot glasses, shot short um disposable shot glasses, and the children could, if they were feeling brave enough, could have a shot of snot, and some of them did, not as many as did the other things, but some brave ones did. Um, and my children love being behind the stall and giving those things out to the other children in the village, which is really nice. So um, we uh have a lot of fun on Halloween doing those things, and then we do go trickle treating around the village as well, which is which is always a really lovely atmosphere because we just seem there just seem to be groups of children all dressed up wandering around doing trickle treating, um, and it's just fun to walk past everyone and go to all the places and see the house decorations. So um, so yeah, we had a really nice time doing that on Halloween. In fact, I do probably should do a little episode on all the different things we've done for Halloween, um, just because I think some of them could be used or adapted for PTA games and events, so yeah, I'll have to try and uh collate those and then I can let you know what we've done. And then if you have a Halloween event or a Halloween disco or something, maybe it might be something that could fit into your stuff. Um, so yes, so now everybody's back at school, and here I am trying to catch up with my podcast, which I feel like I haven't recorded for ages. It's been oh it's been a busy time. Um, I have got lots of episodes planned for you though, and a few interviews lined up, a few chats with people about various things are coming up as well. So do uh sign up to my mailing list, that's on my website, um, and then I can let you know when a new episode is released. But right now we are going to dive into this episode 32 and talk about cake sales. I thought it was a good time to talk about this as it's near the start of a new school year, and there are many opportunities throughout the year when you could run a cake sale and even potentially link it to various seasons or holidays or special days or weeks which seem to crop up every month. There seems to be more and more of these special days. I know that some of my listeners will already have run many cake sales in your PTA career, just as there will be some listeners who are new to the PTA world and may not have tried one yet. So I'm going to try and cover all the basics of a cake sale and include what I felt worked well at the ones I run at my school. Now I have to tell you a quick story about my experience of cake sales. As you know, I've been on my PTA for over eight years, and we didn't start doing cake sales until my maybe fourth year of being on the PTA. The previous PTA team hadn't done them at all, so it really wasn't on my radar as an easy fundraiser that I could do. Then a new teacher at school suggested that it might be a good idea to try one. Now I have to admit to you that I was a bit sceptical about this because, well, mainly because I was still new at fundraising and still learning the ropes and learning what worked well and the fact that you have to mix up your fundraisers a bit. I didn't really have a firm hand on that. Um, and I didn't think we'd make very much money, even if all the children at the school each bought a cake for one pound. And at that time, I think we had about 70 children at our school. So I wasn't really sure if it was a good idea or not, but anyway, we decided to try it, and we asked parents to bring in donations of cakes so we would sell them after school one day. And on that first sale, I think we took £120, which I was gobsmacked by. For some reason, and I still don't know why I thought this. For some reason, I didn't realise that some people would actually buy more than one cake, and I know it sounds really ridiculous, isn't it? Um, and as all the cakes were donated, obviously every cake we sold was 100% profit. So um, after that, I was a complete cake sale convert, and that's why I thought it was worth doing an episode all about cake sales, in case anyone else out there has not yet tapped into this lucrative market for their PTA. So, firstly, when I talk about a cake sale, what do I mean? I'm talking about a fundraising event which is just a simple stall selling cakes to your children and their families, and that's all it is, it's very simple and straightforward in that sense. Now, my school has now it has about 80 children in it in total. So this means that the whole school can come to every cake sale that we run. There is a small queue, but it only takes about I don't know, 10-15 minutes for everyone to get to the front and buy a cake. So at my school, because it's very small, we can run a whole school cake sale every time we do a cake sale. Now, I would love to hear from you if you are in a larger school, even if you're in a school with 150 kids, um, if you're in a school of 200, or even if you're in a school of like 500 children, how do you organise your cake sales? Because I'm really intrigued to hear how other PTAs do this. If you're in a much larger school, do you do it by year group or by key stage or by class or by houses or any other system? Because I can't imagine you hold a cake sale for the whole school of 500 children, or maybe you do, which would be amazing if you do. And how do you manage receiving donations? If you're asking parents for donations, and how do you deal with the cues with that many children and parents queuing up? Please email me and let me know. I'll be really happy to hear from you. It's hello at ptapodcast.com, and I would really love to share any of the replies on a future episode, so do let me know how you organise yours. So the second thing, when do you hold your cake sale? As cake sales are just one store selling one thing, they can quite quickly uh finish, and that means that they're often a really easy thing to have straight after school. Our cake sales tend to be on a Thursday or a Friday, so it's like an end-of-week treat, if you like, and parents can bring their children straight to them after picking up. So straight after school works really well at my school, and we often had them as a standalone event as I think it's enough of an attraction on its own. Everybody seems to come to our cake sales when we hold one. But sometimes, if we want to boost our fundraising, um, we might tag a cake sale onto another event. So, in the past, for example, we have held a secondhand uniform sale or a secondhand book sale, and we have also at the same time in the same location had a cake sale as well because I think it encourages more people to come to the event, and those some people may not have come if it was just the secondhand book sale or something, but with it being a cake sale as well, they might come along, and then um inevitably they're going to look at the other stuff that's there. So, um, having a cake sale attached to something else I always think is a great way of really encouraging people to come along. And of course, a cake sale can and probably should always really be added to a large affair or a fate, and then you have the opportunity potentially to expand it further. Um, we always expanded our cake sales when we had a fate to become a cafe, so we would just add in hot and cold drinks, and then we could call it a cafe, which sounded much more interesting than a cake sale. But something you do have to take into consideration is how often to run a cake sale. I've discovered that you need to be careful not to have one too often in your school year. I guess it makes sense when you think about it. You definitely need to have a balance of assessing how often you're asking for donations of cakes, if that's the approach you take, and then how often you're asking people to buy cakes. So I think on my PTA, overall, we felt that one cake sale every other term was a good balance. So I'm talking in terms of the six-term school year in that sense, so one every other term, um, but you also need to think obviously about any larger events where you may also want a cake sale. So I would say it's definitely worth assessing your events overall and maybe looking across the whole school year to make a plan of when your cake sales might be and which events they are going to be at. Um, I would also add that serving any sort of food at a larger event means that people are more likely to stay longer and linger and potentially then spend more money than they would otherwise. So you may also want to factor that into your planning. Um, I think it is sometimes quite a hard decision because a cake sale on its own, I mean, certainly in my experience, a cake sale on its own at school, most of our families do attend that, so they're well attended on their own. Um, and then uh it is an attraction at a larger event as well. So you'd have to weigh up whether it's better to have a standalone cake sale or whether to miss that term's cake sale and instead shove it into your fate or your larger event, um, and just sort of, I guess you'll have to look at your parent school community and just see what you think would work best in that scenario. Even though cake sales are quite a small event and very straightforward event, you obviously need to ensure that you involve your school when deciding on the format, the date, and the time of your cake sale. And of course, you need to do this with any event you're organising. Um, and just because this is a smaller event doesn't make it any different to that. So you should still complete um, for example, a risk assessment like you would with any other event. If you're new to the PTA world and you're not sure what I mean when I mention risk assessments, then you might like to listen to episode three of my podcast where I explain what they are and how to complete them. They're essentially um a document that just assesses the risks of your event, the risks to your um participants at the event, and um the idea behind it is just to make sure you've minimised um any risk of any accidents or injuries potentially that could happen. Um, they're very, very I think people are a bit scared of risk assessments, but really I think on the PTA it's really important to actually embrace the risk assessment because it can be a great tool in your planning, and I talk about this in episode three. You can also find out information about them on the PTA Plus website as well. And once you have a risk assessment in place, uh the risk assessment document for your cake sale, it's likely that you can use that document each time you have a cake sale, but of course, it's good practice to check your risk assessment each time just in case there are any changes that you need to make. For example, if you change the location of your cake sale to a different part of the school, there might be extra risks with that location that haven't already been addressed on the risk assessment. So even though you could use um the cake sale risk assessment as a starting point, you do need to check it each time. That's just good practice for risk assessments in general, really. And uh also involving your school, if the sale is straight after school, that could mean that you need to go into school for a few minutes before the end of the school day to set up the stall or to pick up the cakes from wherever they've been left. So you do need to liaise with your school about where to put the stall and the fact that you need volunteers to come in to set up. You know, school needs to know if people are coming in, who's do who is DBS checked and who isn't, that kind of thing they need to know. So do make sure that you've discussed your plans with your school and completed um the risk assessment as well. One thing you do need to decide before you communicate with parents all about your cake sale is where you're going to be getting the cakes from for the sale. At my school, I think I've already mentioned, we have always asked for donations from the parents, and if you want to do the same, then of course you will need to put this on your marketing information and give enough notice for your parents to buy or bake their donations. And asking for donations, of course, means that your cake sale will only make profit, which is fantastic, you don't have any costs to recover or pay back. But it can also mean that you don't know how many cakes you'll be getting until the day of the cake sale, which could be a bit of a risky strategy. Um, yeah, it's a hard one because you want people to absorb the message that really, if they want to buy cakes from the cake sale, then then they need to donate cakes, obviously, don't they? Otherwise, there won't be anything there. But at the same time, you need a balance, you don't need everybody to donate six cakes. But if people are wanting to buy when they haven't donated, then there might not be enough cake, so it is a really tricky one, and I do think sometimes people don't make this connection. Uh, certainly at my school, um, we did have a bit of a lull in our cake donations um for about six months, and uh they just started dropping off. But the amount of people queuing up to come to the cake sale was the same every time, so everybody was expecting to buy a cake and wanting to buy a cake, but not everybody or 50% of the parents were donating cakes. Um, and in fact, we did have one cake sale where I think only three parents had donated cakes, and I remember the morning of the cake sale because we we asked parents to bring their donations in via their children on the morning of the cake sale, so they're only in school for one day, the school's not having to store them or anything, and um I saw that there was only three boxes or trays, whatever, of cakes, and possibly let's say there were 10 cakes in each one, so 30 cakes for school of 80 children. And I remember being at home thinking, what should I do? Should I just let the sale go ahead with 30 cakes? Knowing that everybody will want a cake and they'll all be queuing up for a cake and we won't be able to sell to everybody. Um and you know, just thinking of the children towards the back of the queue who wouldn't get a cake made me feel really sad. Um, and I thought, well, that's you know a strong lesson for the parent community if there's not enough cake and you want one and there isn't one there. Or should I bake some more cakes to make up the deficit of cakes? And then I'm not disappointing any of the children. And I did wrangle with this problem for a couple of hours because I didn't know what to do. Uh, and in the end, I just decided I was gonna bake the extra cakes, so I just whipped up a couple of trays of um chocolate cupcakes, which is the easiest thing I think there's to make. Um, and so I took them in so that there were enough cakes for everybody. I think I did mention to my PTA team that we didn't have enough, and I think a couple of other people also brought some in at the last minute, so we did eventually have enough, and I have to confess to you that I wasn't brave enough to let that cake sale continue without enough cake. I just couldn't do it. I wanted it to be a success, and I didn't want the children to be disappointed. Um, so it's a hard one. And I had I know that I did put on the marketing emails after that. You know, if you want to buy a cake, you should consider, but you could consider donating to try and encourage people to kind of make the connection that if you don't donate, there won't be anything there. I'm not sure. How successful that was really, but um, but I'm just letting you know my experience in case you come across a similar thing, and um, I know that there are PTAs out there who would probably have been really brave and let that sale go ahead without enough cake, and perhaps that is the best way to educate people that they need to bring cake in. But at the time I just I just didn't feel brave enough for that to happen, so um, but of course, relying on donations can work really well because you don't have to buy, you don't have to shell out any money, it's all for profit, and um it's really good, but but yes, it does contain an element of risk. So, another option could be to ask supermarkets or other shops local to you to donate cakes. I'm not sure if anyone takes this approach for their cake sales, but at least then you would have a clearer idea of how much you would be getting. Um, so if the supermarket um or shop couldn't donate all of the cakes for your cake sale, at least they could give you a number of how much they could donate, so at least you know what's coming for sure. Um, and then of course, a final option would be to actually buy cakes from a shop and sell to parents. So, for example, you might be able to buy a tray of cakes for a few pounds, but you might be able to sell them for one pound each back to the parents and still make a profit. So I think there are a few options of getting the cakes, um, and each one comes with a slightly different profit margin. And of course, you could use a combination of all of those methods, it's really completely up to you to think about what might work well for your school community and your PTA. Um, personally, I really like the approach of asking for parent donations, not because it is 100% profit, obviously that really helps, but more along the lines of the fact that it's an easy way for somebody to be able to contribute to the PTA or to the school community if they're not actually available to volunteer at events. It's a really easy thing for somebody to do to feel like they have contributed. And I think asking for donations is also part of building a community of and encouraging everybody to put in a little bit of their time if they can, and um I think that um just giving people that opportunity is really worthwhile. I'm sure there are lots of parents who don't have time to be at an event or to be on the committee, but they certainly could just pop an extra box of cakes in with their supermarket shopping or something, or they might like to um you know try and carve out a bit of time to spend with their children creating cakes at home, which is a nice way of bonding with your children um and doing something for the school together. So that's actually why I like asking for parent donations um for a cake sale. If you listen to episode 30 of my podcast, I talked about the recent edition of the school fundraising magazine, which this um this term has an article all about cake sales in it, which I would really encourage you to read. And one of the tips in there, which I thought was brilliant, was to consider having a ready-made group of parent bakers or cake buyers who could step up when it's cake time to provide the cakes. Um, it's a perfect way, again, for people to contribute. So I thought that was a great idea. I think in the magazine it says that one school had organised a WhatsApp group for any parent who was willing to do that, and so when they needed cakes for a fate or a cake sale or whatever, um, one of the PTA would mention it in the group, and those parents would organise the cakes for the event, and I just thought it was a really great idea and a great way to again carve out a little job for some parents, um, and so they can feel like they are making a contribution to the school community and the way that they can. Another way of um getting people to volunteer to make cakes or sorry, buy cakes as well, is to um well, I actually, for one of our summer fates, I've been using a website called volunteersignup.org, which I've talked about um actually probably in a couple of episodes because I think it's really fantastic. It's a website you can go to, it's completely free, and you can set up a list of volunteer, I'm not gonna call them jobs, I'm gonna call them opportunities, volunteer opportunities for an event that you're running as the PTA. So it could just be a small event like a disco or something, or it could be a larger event like a summer fate, and you can basically put in a list of all the uh roles that you need volunteers to fulfil. And I did this for summer fate, um, and I put in, you know, like somebody to run the tombola, somebody to make all the signs, somebody to uh do the cafe, whatever, all these jobs, and at one of them I put in um contribute a cake for the cafe, and I think I put 20 uh slots in there, so I was looking for 20 people to contribute cake, and if each person contributes 10, then that's gonna be plenty of cake for the event, and um that those were those were the jobs that people grabbed first was to contribute cake rather than stand behind a stall for two hours or something, because of course it is the easiest thing, you get your cake, you bring it, and you've done your volunteering. But I put it on there to yeah, try and encourage people who maybe weren't able to volunteer, like people with really small kids, it's very difficult to stand behind a store for a long period of time if you have really little children. So, um, so sometimes it's nice for people to just to grab those little jobs and give them a sense of ownership over it, and it gives them a sense that they are contributing like any other person. So I think that's really good. So once you've decided whether you're going to ask parents for donations or not, then it's time to communicate with your parents and your school community about your cake sale. I found it's best to give a couple of weeks' notice if you can and send a few reminders in a few different ways so that you can be sure you have reached everybody. Um, I have talked about this in episode 24 of my podcast. I talked about communicating with parents and the fact that you just have to send loads of reminders to make sure the message gets through. Um, and you need to send your reminders and your messages in a number of different ways using different methods because people, you know, tend to maybe use lots of different things, um, or they might just stick to one thing. So, you know, some people might rely on receiving an email from the school, other people might rely on seeing it on social media, some people might prefer to see, or it might make more of an impact on somebody if they actually see an actual poster at school. So there's lots of different um pathways that you can use, and of course, marketing is a key part of any event. Um, and I have uh talked about lots of different things that I've tried in episode 24. So, for our cake sales at my school, because they're quite a small event, because they are an easy to understand event, and because we have run them before a number of times, we're normally able to send out a whole school email and maybe follow up with a couple of WhatsApp messages and then maybe a final reminder email a day or two before the event. So it doesn't need to be very onerous for a cake sale. If it's your first one or you're just starting out with your cake sales, then you might need to give a few more reminders and a bit more information just so everybody's on board with it. But I think if you run your cake sales uh the same every time, then probably parents are expecting them, they know what it's going to be like, and you can probably just recycle some things that you've written before. So um, so yes, so don't forget to advertise your cake sale, give people enough notice to buy or bake cakes and um bring them in. Another thing I should probably add on the communication with parents side is that it's very important to be specific with your communication, whether you are expecting donations, and if you are expecting donations, what to do with them, when to bring them in, and where they're where the parents need to put them. Um you don't want people turning up at school with cakes, not knowing where they're going, and you know, potentially just taking them home again. You have to be very clear, and again, this is where you need to work with your school because perhaps they might be able to store the cakes in a room at school. The children um might take them into school as they go in, and then they're put in the room, or the school might prefer you know a couple of volunteers to gather the cakes from the parents and put them in the right space. So just check with your school how that's going to happen, but make sure when you're communicating about donations that people know exactly what they need to do with those donations. And also, before I forget, how they are going to pay for the cakes. So if you want to just have a cash-only cake sale, mention that straight away in your marketing. If you're gonna have a card machine there, mention that as well so that people know they are prepared. It's a quick event, it's a simple event, so the more information you can give out about it so people know it's gonna happen, the better, and the smoother I think it will run. Okay, so while you are waiting for your cakes to arrive, uh possibly from donations from your parents, it's time to consider how to display them and what other equipment you might need at the store. Now, this is going to sound very basic, but just um for anybody that hasn't done this before, I thought it was worth including these details. So you need to borrow some tables large enough to display all the cakes on, okay? Um, and if it's a quick after school sale, you probably won't need any chairs for the volunteers to sit at. Everybody will be standing up behind the store because buying cakes is quick and you're gonna need to reach over to hand over cakes and accept money or cards or whatever. So there's not gonna be any time for sitting down, so don't even bother. I wouldn't even bother um with chairs unless somebody specifically um has the need to use a chair. So, yes, make sure there's um enough tables to fit your cakes on, and hopefully, your school can help you with that. And I believe there are all some essentials to have though, whatever type of cake sale you're running. So, I'm gonna just run through what I feel um I've found essential in the past for cake sales. So the first one, which is really important and actually is something that you also need to mention in your communications with parents, is that you need to have um the ingredients to hand for every single cake that you have so that people can check for allergens. So if you're asking parents for donations, don't forget to ask them to also bring their cake in with a list of ingredients, as um it's it's kind of essential now. I think we've you know all seen lots of reports um in the media of people who have severe allergic reactions, and we don't want any of that to happen at our lovely school cake sale. So just make sure you have all of that information to hand, and then if anybody needs to check it, it's there and it's okay. Obviously, if somebody has bought their cakes, then they just need to send the cakes in with the packaging, which I think probably people would anyway. If it's a home-baked cake, they just need to write down on a bit of paper what the ingredients are and keep it with the cake. So, um, so it's really important to um display the ingredients or at least have them to hand and know which cake is which, so you can say, Oh, that's this cake is from this packet. Uh, secondly, always make sure you have some tongs, a serving slice or a spatula, and a sharp knife, because this means you can then deal with any particularly sticky cakes or cakes which need cutting. So always make sure you have those tools ready. Um, believe me, if somebody brings a cake and that they have baked at home and they haven't already pre-sliced, and you don't have a sharp knife, it is very difficult to cut a cake without the right tools, and you can end up making a complete hash of it. And the beautiful what was a beautiful cake could end up looking just really terrible. So, the right tools for the right job. I think that's some sort of saying, but it it does make a difference. The serving slice, again, if you don't want to get your hands all over the cakes, it looks a bit more hygienic if you can, you know, use a serving slice or some tongs or something like that. So um just be prepared. You might not need to use any of those tools, but it's good to have them as backup just in case. I would say um if you are a PTA that does a lot of cake sales, or you want to be a PTA that does a lot of cake sales, perhaps consider as a PTA investing in those tools and then they will always be available for cake sales. Um, we never did that, we just brought spatulas and things in from home. Um, but there was always a risk that they're gonna get lost or left at school, and then you know, um tucked into the school's food tech room and you would never see them again. So um, yeah, it's probably something we should have done as PTAs, just invest in those tools, and then we already had them at school, you know, you don't want to forget to bring stuff like that in, so it might be a good idea. Another thing which I learnt from experience, which was really good to have, is to ensure you have something to put the cake in when you sell it to someone. Now, it won't always be necessary to have this, so for example, if somebody has got made some fairy cakes and they come in individual cake cases, then obviously you can hold that at the bottom, a child can hold it easily. Um, but there might be other cakes, for example, if you've cut a cake and it doesn't have any paper around it, it might be nice to wrap it in a napkin or something, um, or if there's a particularly sticky cake, or if there's like a chocolate tiffin that if you hold it in your hand, it's going to melt, that kind of thing. It's good to have something as an option for people. So, worst case scenario, if you don't have anything, use paper towels from the school. Um, the step up from that I would say would probably be some nice napkins. Um, but what um we actually used uh is some um bags so that people could then actually take their cake away. So this is actually another point that I wanted to make that my experience of thinking, oh, one person's just gonna buy one cake is complete rubbish because some people are really generous and they will come to the cake sale and buy cakes for the rest of their family, you know, maybe to have later at tea time or something. So you you definitely need um another transport method. Um you did have one cake sale where I had this boy who was gonna get the school bus home, and his mum had sent him in with five pounds to buy, I think, four cakes for him, his brother, his mum, and his dad to have later on, and so he wanted to buy four cakes. Um, and at that time we only had paper towels, and he had to get on the bus, and so we had to. I just saw him struggling with two hands with his school bag on his shoulders, trying to carry four cakes onto the school bus. So we quickly just grabbed them and tried to sort of wrap them in more paper towels so that they would arrive home safely. Um, so that sort of made me think, right, maybe we need to get something that's going to protect cakes on their journey home to you know make sure people can buy lots of cakes if they want to, because of course we want to sell as many as we can. So you can um obviously buy, I think, fancy cake cardboard boxes sometimes that I've seen when cafes do takeaway cakes. Um, I imagine they cost quite a bit of money. I haven't actually costed those up, so that could be something you could look at if you wanted to. What we use are some large paper bags which happen to have like one side of the paper bag, is like a cellophane side. I'm not, you know, I'm not even sure where they came from. They were in our PTA cupboard for ages and ages, and a whole massive stack of them. So we just use those and slide the cakes in, and um then they're just in a bag so people can carry them, and it's much, much easier. So definitely something to put the cakes on or put the cakes in for people to take away is a really really good idea. And then you need to consider how you display your table or your stall and all the cakes that you have. So covering the table with a nice tablecloth is a really great start and would add some nice colour to your stand, and then you can add um you can use some cake stands to add height to the display. Um, and you can take the cakes out of their packaging and display them on the table. So, for example, if even if you just got some wooden boards like kitchen chopping boards, you could display the cakes on those. I think you can get slate boards and things. People might have these at home that they could bring in, you could just borrow them. But if you take um yeah, cakes out of their packaging and display them nicely, then of course, it um you basically need to make your cake display as enticing as possible because you basically you will just sell more cakes and also it elevates your cake sale into something a bit more special. Um, if you do obviously take your cakes out of the packaging, they came in, just make sure you can still provide the ingredients list for the cakes if somebody asks or if um yeah, if you need to basically. There are some great cake stands to buy. I keep a little stash of the cardboard ones that you can assemble and you just kind of slot them together, and then you can disassemble them, and they just sort of lie flat again for storage, they're really good. Um, the cardboard ones that I've got anyway also wipe clean, so you can reuse them. And I have found um just some simple ones on the Sainsbury's website, for example, for only five pounds, um, which could be used for any occasion, they're not particularly themed, they're just nice. Um, and so you could just perhaps buy some of those, and then it just makes the table a bit better if you can add some different heights on your table, um, so the cakes aren't just you know flat on one level. So, again, a cake stands might be something you might want to consider investing in as a PTA, um, just so you've always got those as well. I'm going to try and put a photo of the cake stands on my website so that you can see what I mean about those. Um, so yeah, do have a look there and then you understand it. Um, another thing which I also started to do, certainly when we were having the cake sale as like a cafe at Summer Fate, was that we were labelling the cakes so people knew what the cakes were. If you go to a cake sale and you just see a table of cakes, um sometimes you just really want to know what the flavour is or well, yeah, basically what the cake is because it might influence your decision on um which one to buy. And I have found the perfect way to do this. There's a little label holder called a crocodile clip stand. They are really small. Basically, if you can imagine just a cube of wood, small cube of wood, and then with a with a metal um like a metal stick sticking out the middle at uh at the top, and and on the end of that metal tiny metal pole, there's a little crocodile clip. Um, then then they can hold a label vertically and they stick up from the table. Again, I'm going to put a photo of this on my website because. Clearly, I'm not doing a very good job of explaining exactly what that is, but they are brilliant at labeling the cakes because they're nice and small and they stick up above the cakes, and you can dot them around the table holding uh whatever label you want. So, I would highly recommend trying to label your cakes like that with a description. It's so much easier then for your customers to see what's available and actually to make a choice because you don't want loads of people saying, Oh, what's that cake? or what's this cake? Um, if they can actually read it themselves, then they can make a decision and it does make things kind of a bit smoother, if you like. But yes, I will put a photo of that on my website as well, so you can see what I mean. And again, that could be really worthwhile investing in some of those for your PTA. They would come in handy for so many different things. Um, the crocodile clip stands, so I yes, it might be something worth looking into. Now, here's a question for you does it matter what type of cakes you sell? Are cupcakes better? Should you have at least 50% of the choice to be some sort of chocolate cake? In my experience, it doesn't matter. In fact, I did a poll of my friends and family to see, just out of curiosity, if in fact people do all pick the same cake. Um, I was expecting most of the replies to be chocolate cake, but I was really surprised uh at what people said. So I'm just going to read out to you the comments that I received on my poll. Just a sec. So I asked my friends and family if you rock up to a charity cake sale, what do you look for? If you do an immediate scan of the table, what are you scanning for? What is your favourite go-to cake? So these are the replies that I received from uh random uh friends and family of mine. So, first person, always a chocolate brownie. Another person said a brownie or a cookie, something easily transportable, so I would avoid icing. Interesting. Somebody else, something easy to carry home, usually individual portions, as everyone in the family likes something different. Another person said they always look for a nice Victoria sponge or a chocolate cake. Homemade ones are normally fresh and look really tasty. Somebody else says that rice crispy or cornflake cakes are the best and the only type my child likes, so she's always sad at the cake sale when there aren't any. And I have to say, I think there's often rice crispy cakes and cornflake cakes. So um I don't know if I've ever seen a cake sale without one of those because they're so easy to make, aren't they? Um, but anyway, that's an example of cake you don't even need to bake, so that's a good one. Somebody else said millionaire shortbread are the best, and yes, I'm a fan of millionaire shortbread, and actually on my own table scan, I would definitely look out for those. Um, okay, my friend said uh that she normally bakes if it's a charity bake sale, but if if she's the other side of the table and she's buying, she would look for something that she wouldn't bake for herself, so basically a fancy cake. Um and she says when she's baking for a cake sale, she goes for batch bakes that don't cost too much to make, look and taste good, and are not too expensive to buy. Um, her go-tos are chocolate brownie, tiffin, vanilla butterfly buns, yum yum, and a tea loaf. Um, she says scones, Victoria sponges, and jam tarts do well in summertime. Yes, I think I would agree with that. Uh, somebody else said they'd look for a really nice fruit cake, but it has to have cherries in it. So there you go. If you're making fruit cake, put cherries in. Uh, my friend said, not all my baking is a success. I look for the cake that someone has gone to the effort to make and for whatever reason looks overdone, dry, not a favourite flavour, and is now not selling. And she said she buys the biggest slice of that cake, and I thought that was an absolutely lovely thing to do. Um, because when you bake for a cake sale, or when you just bake in general, sometimes it just doesn't go to plan, does it? And if you're baking for an event, you might have one opportunity to get that cake done in your very busy life, and for whatever reason, it's turned out overdone, and it never normally does, but you know, the one time you make it for a cake sale, it's gone slightly wrong, and for her to acknowledge that and notice somebody else's effort, I think is just a really beautiful thing, and then the fact that she would buy that, oh, just love that reply. That's excellent. So, as you can tell there, everybody likes something different. I was I was really not expecting that at all. Um, so basically, the summary of that little uh poll that I did is that you need a lot of options because everybody likes something different, and of course, by asking for donations of cakes, you will automatically receive a large variety of things. So, in a way, that should take care of itself. Um, I suppose the only thing I would try and avoid having on your cake sale is anything like a cream cake which would need to be kept in the fridge, but apart from that, I can't think of anything that would um not be appropriate at a cake sale. So uh bring it on, is what I say. Bring those cakes. So, in terms of pricing, we have always kept ours really simple and usually have everything for one pound per cake or biscuit, unless there are some particularly small things, and then I would probably go 50p. But I would recommend keeping to only a couple of prices and um keep it that just keeps it more simple for adding up, you know. If people are buying more than one thing, it keeps it simple for making a float and also for giving out change. Um, and of course, a one pound cake or a 50p cake are just one coin, so and it's very easy for parents to give one coin to their child to buy a cake if the parent's not going to be there at pickup time and the child can still go to the cake sale. So at my school, probably because it's quite small, um, the teachers help any bus children to buy a quick cake before they get on the bus. So the parents provide their children with the money, they take it to school, and that also makes it very easy too, so the bus children are not missing out on a cake. Um obviously, you could use a card payment machine as well. So I think I mentioned earlier in the episode, just let your parents know how they're able to pay for the cakes in advance. And again, to make a cake sale a quick event, you also need to have plenty of volunteers to help sell the cakes. You basically need multiple points of sale along your table display. Um, sometimes ours is just staffed by parent volunteers, and sometimes some of the older children, I think year fives and year sixes, could help out if we are really stuck for volunteers. A cake sale is actually a very easy store for children to help at and learn to do selling and customer service and to give out change and add up prices. Um, so if you don't have enough parent volunteers, then do ask the school for older children helpers. It's a great experience for them and it's a great way to introduce them to volunteering and running a stall. Um, and it's nice and busy, so everyone's entertained the whole time. So, yeah, I would definitely try and get some of the children involved if you can. Okay, I think that's pretty much all the info about the cake sale itself. Once the sale is over, what do you do with any leftover cakes? Sometimes at my school, if we have enough leftover, we can sometimes run a second cake sale the next day. It seems um like a waste not to try and sell the cakes that have been donated. Um, of course, the other option is to try and return the cakes the next day to whoever brought them in, and the best way to do that, plus any empty containers we have found is to leave everything in a communal area so parents can pop in and pick things up or put them out in the playground at pick-up time for the parents to collect. So it's up to you whether, and and I guess it's you know, it's up to parents if they would rather take the cake home that wasn't sold, of course, that's that's their choice to do it. So, um, but most of the time I have I think the feeling is that they most parents are quite happy for you to try and sell the rest of their cakes if they haven't all sold. I think um not many, I can't actually I can't think of anybody who has ever asked for um their unsold cakes to come back to them. I can't think of anybody. So hopefully you might be able to have another quick sale and and get make even more money, which would be really nice. So I think we have covered everything about holding a standard cake sale. Um, once you have tried this a couple of times, I recommend coming together as a PTA group and just assessing how it's going, especially if you haven't run one before. There could be some opportunities to improve the way you do the sale. For example, do you need to do more advertising next time? Do you need to find a different way to manage the queue? Do you need to reassess the type of payments you can accept? What changes could you make to enable people to buy more cakes? Um, I talk about how making even tiny changes to an event can add up to an even bigger profit in my episode 26 called Improving Your Event Planning. So you might like to have a listen to that and have a think about any potential improvements you could make to your cake sales. Because there's bound to be something that you could do. There always is, there always is something. Um, so yeah, it's well worth just reassessing if if there's any changes you could make. So I hope you found my experiences of a standard cake sale useful so far. If you are new to cake sales or if you have run a few cake sales before, maybe there was something that I mentioned that is of interest to you to try perhaps. Um, this is actually a two-parter episode, so this is cake sales part one, and in my next episode, I'm going to talk about um how you can elevate your cake sale to a higher level to make it even more tempting for families to attend. And I will also be talking about baking for a cake sale. Please do have a listen to that as even if you feel you are not a home baker, I have some ideas for you if you want to create something at home, maybe some quality time, messy time with your children, um, if you wanted to create something for a school bake sale. And so don't forget to have a look on my website. I'm going to be putting some photos of the cake stands I've mentioned and also those crocodile clip um holders that I mentioned, so you can you don't have to rely on my terrible descriptions, you can actually see a picture of them. And if you go to my website, you can sign up to my mailing list. I email out to you once a new episode is ready to listen to, so you might like to sign up to that. And that's kind of it for this episode, Cake Sales Part 1. As I said, please do let me know how you handle your cake sales at your school. Do you have any tips that you would like to share? I would love to hear from any listeners. Um, every time, anytime, do drop me a line. It's hello at ptapodcast.com. Um, yeah, so if you submit to my mailing list, I can then alert you when cake sales part two, when that episode is uh coming out. And on my website, you can also try my Summer Fate organization game there that I developed with my son, um, and we chat about that in episode 29. So just want to say good luck with whatever your PTA is working on at the moment, and I will speak to you next time. Bye for now.