Pet Peeves: Bakery Edition

Corollary: If I’m buying more than $20 of pastries, don’t make me ask for a bag.

Read on for more Pet Peeves: Bakery Edition.

• I don’t expect a full bakery display as soon as the doors open, but at least have breakfast pastries ready…for breakfast. And when your case empties at the end of the day, I don’t want to stare at the cookie crumbs and flaky remnants of the pastries that once lingered there.
• Queue the line in front of the display case. I can’t tell you how many bakeries I’ve walked into where the baked goods were spaced so far apart that by the time I got on line to order, I could barely recall what I wanted to buy.
• I don’t want to be able to count the pieces of apple in my apple Danish.
• That custard tart may taste delicious but you’ll have a hard time convincing me to buy when the filling is pulling away from the shell. Ditto for the limp strawberry that is bleeding onto the cake below. Corollary: first in, first out also applies to your display inventory. A cup of coffee will not soothe the savage taste of stale pastry.
• I don’t want to know that you have a new hire because everything tastes different, and not in a good way.
• How about some savory items? Something besides cheesy bread with ham.
• Overblown menu descriptions. Your cookies are not better than my grandma’s cookies. You never met her. You don’t know what her cookies taste like.
• Define “freshly baked” and “baked from scratch”.
• Impeccably decorated pastries that taste like…nothing.
• A display of 20 flavors…of the same pastry.
• Dry cake. Overtly sweet frosting.  Corollary: More cake, less icing.
• I don’t expect an expertly brewed cappuccino complete with latte art, although a decent cup of drip-brewed coffee would be nice. Decent, as in brewed with coffee beans and water. Not watered down coffee concentrate with powdered non-dairy creamer.
• You charge an extra dollar to slice my bread? That’s a 25% markup. No thanks, I’ll keep the dollar, you keep the loaf.
• And my biggest pet peeve:  signage. That cartoonish font may look cool on your computer, but it is unreadable when hoisted 10 feet overhead, or shrunken to fit a 4 inch-by-4 inch card that’s posted behind a display case four feet from my line of sight. Please include the price, and if it’s not a cookie, pricing by the pound is tacky.
• By the way, if you want me to come back, how about posting the hours on the door?