It’s not often that someone is served their just desserts, but a local bakery has had the last sweet word after a customer slated it for not serving pies. After receiving the one-star review on a public review platform, Cherry Blossom Bakery on Church Street in Macclesfield, which specialises in cakes and afternoon tea, directly responded to the criticism by creating a series of pie-themed cakes.
Detailing the saga on their Facebook and Instagram pages, the team behind the bakery told its followers to “settle in” as it regaled them with “the story of a man who was very mad that we didn’t sell pies”. The one-star review in question, which was shared on Google simply read: “Says it's a bakery but no pies, try cake shop instead”.
In response to this, the team at the bakery wrote back: “Hi, this seems a bit mean of a review, however there is a pie shop just next door so hopefully you managed to get sorted. Best wishes. Note just read your review of the amazing pies from the next food so looks like it all worked out well for you in the end!!”
Still baffled by the review, the bakery shared the exchange on their social media accounts, which was met with thousands of messages of support. One tongue-in-cheek comment read: “I went to Spearings and they didn’t have any cupcakes. 1 star! Then I went to the post office and they had no sofas! World’s gone mad!”
Another person wrote: “Can we comment on this guy's review? Is there a link? It’s made me cackle - but I think these ppl do need to be told that petty c*** like this can actually damage bloody good business”, while another stated: “I mean the name cherry blossom screams pork pies doesn’t it, there’s always one!”
Making sure they had the last word, the bakery, which predominantly makes wedding and celebration cakes, then posted a throwback to a cake they had designed to look like a pie served on a picnic basket, followed by a series of posts proving they had found the funny side of a one-star review. One image showed a sign saying ‘pies available next door’, nodding to their neighbours N. Carter & Co, a butchers and pie bakery, while another revealed this week's special bake - a caramel pie cupcake, which had been designed to look like a pie too.
As with their earlier posts, the bakery’s loyal customers and followers were quick to applaud their clever response to the negative review. On Cherry Blossom’s Facebook post featuring a small, pie-styled cupcake, one person wrote: “This is a masterclass on turning a negative into a positive! Cake pie! Genius.”
‘Piegate’ clearly made many laugh too, with another person on Facebook writing: “Have you hired Aldi’s social media team? Brilliant”, while many others cheekily asked if they served pies and took requests. And while it seems the bakery team also had a good laugh at the whole saga, they have also spoken about the toll negative reviews take on small businesses.
Speaking to the Manchester Evening News, owner Antonia Fusaro said: “Hospitality is one of the few industries where your efforts, hard work, business decisions and even your personalities are available to be rated, berated and reviewed on massive public platforms and sometimes I think people forget that behind these small businesses are just people, usually very tired people, who are just trying to make their town a nicer place - believe me if we were in this for the cash we would all be choosing different careers.
“No matter how hard we try and make light of pesky one star reviews, they matter. They affect our Google ratings and they deter people from coming and supporting us and hospitality is hard enough at the moment without this extra kicking which is why we will always respond. It can't be one rule for one and another for another, if you put your opinions on a review site it's because you want people to hear what you have to say, so you can't then be disgruntled when the person you have slated responds.”
Wrapping up the whole debate on Instagram, the bakery added: “Moral of the story, don’t be mean to small businesses, we don’t like it and you’ll probs end up looking a bit silly!”
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