Oct
16
Social media helps turn cupcakes to cash
Filed Under Trends
Ken Glasgow gets comfortable about marketing comfort food
By SARA COMITO
Associate Editor
Selling the ultimate comfort food is not really that hard. Ken Glasgow, who owns Simply Cupcakes of Naples with his baker wife Joanne, wishes he knew years ago how lucrative and rewarding it can be.
The “cupcakery” has become an unlikely example of the power of social media, having been featured on a panel at the most recent Social Media Club of Southwest Florida event on Sept. 22.
In Glasgow’s words, when it comes to social media, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
He could have fooled us, having gained 500 Facebook fans in three weeks.
Glasgow talked with Southwest Florida Business Today about Twitter, nostalgia and why you need a cupcake in your mouth. Warning: this interview could lead to sugar cravings.
SWFBT: How long have you been in business?
Glasgow: It’s really Joanne’s business. I’m the legal owner but I have my own finance company. Joanne started the business a little over three years ago at the Third Street Farmers Market. That’s where she tested whether there was a demand for cupcakes, and it was overwhelming, initially. She would sell 30 dozen cupcakes in four hours on Saturday morning over there.
Was she prepared for that volume?
That’s all she could bake during the week. She took whatever she could to the market and just sold out. After the market closed we started an online cupcakery – that’s what it’s called. Most businesses open a store, then put up a Web site. We had a Web site for three years, then opened a store. So it’s a little reverse of normal thinking.
But it may be a little more practical to build up your capital before you actually open your brick and mortar storefront.
Exactly. When we finally decided we needed to open a store, it was not to open a retail store. We wanted a bigger place to bake so Joanne could hire an assistant and we could get a big commercial oven. We found this location (2757 Tamiami Trail East, next to ABC Liquors) and it had been vacant for two years. They gave us a terrific deal. We’re going to be baking for all our special orders, because we do weddings and parties where you need two or three hundred cupcakes. We decided we’ll make extra and put them out on the counter. Well, it’s turned into a retail business.
When did you move into the physical location?
March 6 of this year. But when we moved in, we already had 300 regular customers in Naples. Up to that point, we had done no advertising at all. They’d written tremendous articles about Joanne, because she was a good story. She was a pediatric registered nurse for 30 years and worked part time with a friend up north who was an award-winning dessert caterer. Like I said, it makes an interesting story, because at the age of 62, when most women are retiring, Joanne was starting a business.
Does coming from a Web site-based business first help you understand how to use the Internet for marketing purposes?
It does. We don’t get a lot of traffic on our Web site. Usually 50 to 75 visitors a day, but they come from all over the world because we’ve been written up on cupcake blogs. As a result, we’ve had people visit our site from Australia to Albania to China. They’ve done articles about us in a German tourist magazine. We really have had no problems getting the word out.
And social media is a big part of that for you?
I don’t know what I’m doing. I went to Twitter first because I thought that’s a good way to let people know the specials, what’s left, that sort of thing.
We got the idea because Joanne went to New York and visited all the cupcake stores and she found a cupcake truck – a guy who parks on a different street every day. He put on Twitter in the morning where he was going to be located. He sold 2,000 cupcakes a day.
We decided we’re going to do the same thing down here. We’re going to have a cupcake truck that goes around, particularly in Lee County, because we have a lot of customers up there and it’s a long way for them to come to us.
So I went to Twitter, figuring I’ll do the same thing, but on Twitter, you’re limited to a sentence. I don’t deal in sentences, I deal in paragraphs. I ended up on Facebook. It took me three days to figure out how to put up a business page. We had 100 fans the first week, and within three weeks we had 500 fans. I announced as soon as we got to 500 fans I was going to give out a free cupcake to everyone of those 500 fans, which we did. So now when we get to 1,000, we’re going to give out 1,000 cupcakes; and we were at 916 this morning.
Pretty soon we’re going to run a promotion where people come into the store and they drop their name in a jar, we draw a name, and that person is going to get to spend the morning baking cupcakes with Joanne.
That’s free labor for you, right?
It will be like cupcake camp. Do you know how many women are going to be interested?
For those people who don’t really know, how would you define social media marketing?
The way I look at it is: I’m having a conversation with my customers. I’m telling them something, but I’m asking them to tell me something back. It lets us know what the customers want and what they’re thinking. It also lets them indirectly communicate with each other. When one says, “My favorite cupcake’s the Funky Monkey – I dream about it at night,” then the next person that comes into the store says, “I heard the Funky Monkey is good. Tell me about that.” That’s the kind of thing that becomes viral.
You’re letting the customers talk about you – for you.
Exactly. In our business, the goal is two things: One is get them to the store; number two is get a cupcake in their mouth. The cupcakes sell themselves. The cupcakes are the star. We use French chocolate, Italian butter cream, Mexican vanilla, we make our own key lime curd. Everything is natural, everything is good. We’ve had people tell us it’s the best they’ve ever had. When we send a dozen cupcakes out, that’s going in 12 mouths. Those are 12 potential customers. We’ve had many customers come in and say, “I’ve never been here before, but I was at someone’s house the other night and I had one and I’ve got to get one for myself.” That’s the way this business has grown.
And you still have time to be a financial services professional on the side?
I have 25 offices. It’s equipment and vehicle leasing. I’m semi-retired, forced into semi-retirement by the economy. We spend more time repossessing than lending now. It’s not fun. I did it for 43 years.
This cupcake business is fun because people smile, people are happy. We have a good time. We purposely have an open kitchen so when people come in, they can smell the cupcakes being baked, they can see the girls finishing the cupcakes, they can talk to the bakers.
This is what life used to be like. You’re probably not old enough to remember, but it used to be you walk into the bakery and talk to the baker.
I don’t mean to get off on a rant, but I just had my high school 50th reunion. We talked about how when we grew up in the ’50s, life was so simple. Everybody could buy a house and everybody could go to college. Our kids and grandkids are not going to have that.
A cupcake and a glass of milk take you back to when life was simpler. What we’re selling is nostalgia.
And people are craving that right now.
Oh they are, they are. Our slogan is, “Have a Simply Cupcake; you deserve it.” At $2.50, you might not be able to go to the Bahamas, but for a few minutes, you can live in luxury.
I think I went off on some tangents there. When I talk about this stuff I get excited. I spent 40 years doing something else and I wish I had known about this a long time ago. It’s not only fun, but there’s money in it.
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Informative and entertaining article. Really well-written, bringing a local social media success story to life.