08 | May | 2011 | Stepford Life.

I love yelp. Yelp is this great site/app that helps you find things in your town or when you’re traveling. I started using it a while ago, but once I opened my business I started to sweat over it. Let’s be honest, customer feedback use to be a box and an anonymous note about your biz, pre-technology “good old days.” Now we deal with daily pros and cons– not just from professional food writers, but from people who pretend to be writers but might just be chronic whiners, and then there’s the problem with fake accounts by clowns who just want to publicly attack you.

Jealousy is not awesome. But one thing I know as a yelp fan–those reviews are not even acknowledged by real users. I appreciate constructive criticism. You think our cupcakes are great, wonderful, the best, amazing, earth shattering….awesome! If you get one that is small, dry, tasteless, or ugly well guess what? Getting online and giving me constructive criticism isn’t going to kill me or hurt my feelings. A great thing about yelp is that I can apologize when I’ve done someone wrong, I can offer a refund, and I can be appreciative that a customer gave me their business in the first place. I like to fix REAL problems and make things better.

What I can’t deal with would be the mean, nasty people out there that want to be hurtful. I haven’t done a damn thing to anyone, so when word on the street is that there are locals shit talking me, well I can’t help but wonder WHY. Why do you want to play that game?This is my business, this is my life. The store is something I work at, heart and soul. I love what I do. I leave my home and my kids and I gamble on an idea EVERYDAY. Why would someone think it’s okay to stalk me around the Internet slandering me whenever they can? Get a life, find something to do with your time that is unrelated to hating on me, because you don’t even know me. I don’t have enough time to respond to stupidity, because when I’m not at work I am with my family. So grow up. I don’t have time to deal with garbage. I would never, ever spend one moment publicly attacking a competitor. You know why? Because it’s CAKE. It’s not the amazing race, it’s CAKE. Everyone eats CAKE. I’m not threatened by someone else’s CAKE. I eat cake, love cake, and don’t have time for petty shit and most of all wouldn’t want to hurt someone else’s business when I know what it takes to jump off a bridge into a sea called business ownership. It’s HARD. Everyday is hard, life is too short so quit being negative.

That said. Back to what’s important, and that was YELP.

Yelp is totally awesome, and I was pumped when I was asked to be a vendor at the 1st Yelpo De Mayo in Uptown Charlotte. I met incredibly awesome people (real foodies, not bs’ers!) and ate and drank a boatload of awesome (and free!) treats. It was a blast. I want to share the pictures, because they’re fab.

Also, thanks to everyone at the shop that busted their ass that weekend (Deb, Margaret, Amy, Tara, Taylor, Shayla, Ali, Hailee, and my madre) between Yelp (yay success) and the Strawberry Festival (not so much) we were bat shit crazy in that kitchen for days. Okay, shutting up.

setting up, me and some hot chicks-