Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing 🍪
👋 Hey - Heather and Corrie here with the Baking it Down Podcast with Sugar Cookie Marketing (a group on Facebook full of sugar cookiers turned business owners).
🍪 We're here to help you rise with your reach, flood with new followers, bake up new ideas, and make that all-important dough (while makin' that dough - see the pun there?)
🤑. What’s it about? We’re a Facebook Group turned Podcast, Membership, Book Club, and Baking 101 that’s dedicated to assisting bakers in effectively marketing online to generate more sales and better manage their businesses.
🧠 With free Facebook Live classes, hundreds of resources, and thousands of like-minded bakers, there’s a lot to learn in "SCM" (aka Sugar Cookie Marketing). ️🎧 As an extension of our Facebook group, this podcast is here to let you learn by listening. 📈 We'll cover group topics, marketing trends, and more (leaving this wide open in case Corrie wants to start singing).
💸 We take the sweet art of selling online to the cottage bakery world with marketing methods that move products (and pastries).👂 So open up those glorious ear canals because we have a podcast! Just when you’ve thought you’ve “heard” it all with those marketing "miracle" twins (that's our last name - not a proclamation), we’ve got something just for you each week!
🥣 As a baker, you don't always have the luxury of two hands needed to scroll in Sugar Cookie Marketing Group or crack open a book in Sugar Cookie Bookies, but what you can do is listen (unless you're my kid asking “what’s for dinner” for the millionth time).
👐 Hands full of flour? No problem! 👍 18 dozen iced cookies due tomorrow? Let’s do this. The Baking it Down Podcast by Sugar Cookie Marketing is a weekly podcast geared toward helping you grow your bakery business - dropping (almost) every Tuesday.
📅 We choose a topic each week that's either something new and emerging in the world of social media or something that we saw in "The Group" that was a hot topic and we bake it down... I mean, "break" it down for you. 🗯️ What you can expect in the podcast is about an hour of chit-chat with the meat and potatoes right at the beginning of the episode.
🥔 That’s when we dive into the marketing topic of the week! 📞 Oh yeah, folks can call / text / email in with their questions too - a fun way to hear from other bakers out there.
Our promises to you:
1️⃣ We always make it clean = no cursing. We understand that you are busy and could be around little ones while also trying to get your weekly dose of business growth so we make sure that each episode would make our grandma proud and keep it clean so you can listen while also living your life.
2️⃣ We always make it fun. There’s a lot of negativity in the world so we try and make the podcast an upbeat and fun learning experience for you. I mean, we try to make the Instagram updates and changes as happy as we can, but come on Instagram! Give it a rest! No more changes!
3️⃣ Other than that, we take a positive approach to marketing We are also *not* professional podcasters. I feel like we need to say this because, hey, sometimes we get giggles! We do our best to extend our marketing knowledge to you all free of charge each week at the cost of listening to our higher-than-normal pitched voices and the occasional giggle spree.
4️⃣ You can find the podcast on all the major platforms and you can typically expect a new episode each Tuesday afternoon (unless life happens). We invite everyone to listen.
Either start from the beginning or work backward! The episodes don’t build off themselves so you won’t be confused hearing one before the other. You just might miss new Lives we mention but you can always catch the replay in the Sugar Cookie Marketing Group on Facebook!
Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing 🍪
117. Baking it Down - Olive Garden No More
🫒 Olive Garden No Mo' ❌
We're NEVER going back to the Olive Garden!
Kidding - I am absolutely going back - every Tuesday before the podcast actually. BUT... we noticed something crazy at the "OG" that we don't often witness at other restaurants - the sheer entitlement. But what causes the OG crowd to feel like they're owed more than bottomless bread baskets and endless salads?
Here's our theory: pricing, freebies, and exclusivity.
Weird parallel incoming: Hermes bags are the opposite of Olive Garden. The lowest prices Hermes bag is $10,000. Yeah - no, that wasn't a typo surprisingly. And when Hermes calls you to buy a bag you hate? You say "absolutely - let me just take an entire day off of work and a second mortgage."
So why does Olive Garden get crazy clients and screaming kids when they don't charge an arm, leg, and left kidney in exchange for leather? Well - let's dive into the endless breadsticks and talk about it.
🤑 Highest End of a Low Budget vs Lowest End of a Higher Budget
Darden Restaurant Group owns both Olive Garden and Seasons 52 (think: OG's cooler, older cousin who doesn't visit often because they're living in Europe building an art studio). Seasons 52 is on average $15 higher per plate than Olive Garden. For those with more well-rounded wallets, Seasons 52 is on the cheaper side compared to the likes of Ruth Chris Steakhouse, Mortons, and Fogo de Chao (shoe? chow?).
But the Garden Olives appeals to a more budget-conscious buyer (ahem - the twins) and thus likely falls at the top of that person's budget. Meaning - they have high expectations for our bread basket bastion. And why wouldn't they - these folks want the royal treatment for this budget buster and only endless bread, buckets of salad, free butter, and bottomless diet cokes will suffice!
🆓 Those Freebies Will Cost Ya
🎁 "If I give my client more for free they'll likely love me forever!" Helloooo recipe for codependency! Listen - giving something for free once may build good vibes. But giving something free three times builds expectations. Giving something for free 5 times? Builds dependence. And then charging the sixth time? Recipe for resentment.
😡 Because the OG gives so much for free, folks would suddenly be APPALLED if we were charged for the breadsticks. Why? We don't think "Wow Olive Garden, you're so nice for giving us so much for nothing" but rather, 😠 "How rude - you're charging for something that you have for FREE before!? I'M MAD!"
🧺 Endless is the End
You can't sustain free unless you work off of scale ⚖ - something a global chain of 893 Olive Gardens can accomplish - one baker in their home kitchen? Not so much. Giving things for free or competing on price = the quick end to any cottage home business.
We only have 24 hours in the day. Might as well spend those hours getting the highest ticket sales rather than budget-busting tire kickers. 👟🛞 Cookies are a luxury - they're the Hermes of the boutique food world. Folks aren't trying to give people food to live on - no, they want to impress their friends with a fancy edible gift that embodies how much they love and cherish that person.
🦖 Why else would you get a purple dinosaur iris flower set?! 🌷
