Cupcake Championship

Ahhh Cupcakes, they are all the rage. From birthday parties to weddings people are foregoing the traditional cake for these handheld treats.


When my friend told me about the Cupcake wars a.k.a. The Great Cupcake Championship put on by Rhode Island Food Fights  (http://rifoodfights.com/) I said "I'm in".  Hec, I even dragged along another friend and her daughter.


The cost for tickets was 10.00 (they were completely sold out), the place was Fete on Sunday, March 9th from 1p-4p. Fete apparently is a night club in a seedy little section of Providence.  This was all the info we had going in.


As we arrived we saw the very long line that we would have to stand in to even get in the doors.  We found a place to park and waited in line for about 30-40 minutes. Once we got to the doors we were given wristbands, gave our tickets and we received a voting ticket. This voting ticket was a little yellow raffle ticket that we were to drop in the bag at the table of the exhibitor that we thought had the best cupcakes...in we went....it was complete and total mayhem.


It was a great idea and we did sample many delicious cupcakes. Sampled some not so good cupcakes such as apple and passionfruit. But I could not tell you the names of the bakeries that provided these treats.  This was one of the most disorganized events I have ever been too.


As a Marketing/Promotions Director and Event Manager for more years that I care to admit let me tell you how this event should have went down. . .


1.  An event like this should be held at a larger venue ie the Convention Center


2.  There should be 3 times as many exhibitors


3.  You should be given a list of the names of the exhibitors


4.  You should have a punch card, wait in an organized line at the exhibitors booth (you could have something called a stanchion, look it up) one would wait patiently in line, take a cupcake and get their card punched at that station, and move on to the next.


5.  MORE TRASH CANS... preferably one at each exhibitors booth. We were walking around (if could could call it walking, it was more like being in a herd of cattle) with all these cupcake wrappers and no place to put them.


6. WATER, WATER WATER.  Have a place that we can at least buy some water and cleanse the palette a bit


7.  Have a voting booth in a separate location. After fighting the crowd and getting to the very last cupcake exhibitor we were not about to go back to drop our ticket off.


8.  Exhibitors....have a memorable display, get creative, make a minion cupcake or something.  Every cupcake looked the same, there were no fun, outstanding, creative, memorable cupcakes.  Remember, if you make that impression and have the best tasting cupcake, you will get business for years to come, you will be the one that everybody must have at there next party.


9.  Make plenty of cupcakes, there were one or two exhibitors that had run out within the first hour, not good for your business.

Make a few of these changes, and I'll go again.

Now that being said, the only cupcake vendor that I can talk about by name, and only because when I walked in they had a big pink banner hanging behind their table is Shayna's Gourmet Cupcakes, Seekonk.  They had the most amazing cupcakes, and after being on the search for the best lemon cupcake in the area, I have to say I found it.  Shayna's has the BEST lemon cupcake.  Prior to this Cupcake Charlies was my favorite (cupcake Charlies located in Plymouth, Newport and Foxboro).




That's just my opinion