An open letter to CakeSafe

NOTE: I was originally planning to email this letter to the company, but my use of visual aids rendered my message too large. I have instead invited them to view my letter on this platform.  If you are unfamiliar with CakeSafe, videos of their product and how it is used may be found here.

Greetings CakeSafe Team,

I'm sure you get dozens of emails from satisfied customers every day, but I wanted to let you know that my order has arrived safely. Your product is truly one of a kind, and I cannot wait to take it on a delivery with a real cake. In addition to being 100% satisfied with my order and 100% grateful that your top tier customer service team took the time to ensure that I understood JUST HOW BIG the product I ordered truly was, I would like to tell you a story about something which I 100% wish I had thought to consider before my purchase.

A little back story: I specialize in gravity defying sculpted cakes, but also sometimes supply tiered cakes for weddings. I ordered a CakeSafe for two reasons:

1) I needed a way to protect oddly-shaped cakes during transport. By this I am referring to cakes that require their own internal structure and cannot not make functional use of the CakeSafe's steel center rod. 

2) I was looking for ways to reduce the hassle of repeatedly buying threaded rod and plywood at the hardware store to stabilize a simple tiered cake for transport. 

That being said, my work space is quite small. It is not in any way shape or form industrial, and half of the projects I attempt might be considered "ill-advised" for the space. I especially struggle with a little thing called SCALE. I will start a project and think, "Oh, that's totally going to fit in the refrigerator!" Then I end up with a situation like this...

...where I literally cannot finish the project until right before delivery because the completed project would not fit in the refrigerator...

This cake in particular *almost* did not fit in the delivery vehicle, either.  In the picture below, you can see that the cake is sitting in the wheel well/trunk of a minivan. If that cavity had not been there for the cake to sit in, it certainly would not have fit in the vehicle or made it to it's final destination. Instances like these are what make my partner repeatedly threaten to build (haha... right) me a set of "cake rulers" so I would have a working set of physical parameters inside which to build my creations. 

My assistant sat like this for the entire 45 minute drive.

This is where CakeSafe comes to my rescue. Not only will it serve the aforementioned purposes 1 & 2, but this new device is also my official SIZE GUIDELINE for future projects. The large CakeSafe will in fact fit in my delivery vehicle, and is large enough to accommodate the upper end of common size limits for competition pieces. Simply put: If it cannot fit inside this box, I need to change something. 

My package landed yesterday. After missing the mail carrier for the required signature, I was impatient for the USPS's second attempt at delivery, and ended up going to the post office to retrieve it this afternoon. Upon arriving home, I could barely contain my excitement.

I carefully sliced open the box containing my new toy. Peeling through layers of very thoughtful packaging, I made a mental note to try the bubble wrap as a dog-silencing mechanism for the neighbor's obnoxious canine. (Woohoo! Bonus!) I fished out the literature and handed it to my partner, who was equally as excited to see me having a second Christmas. He read the instructions aloud as I began piecing together my new BFF.

First, we put up the walls of the unit. As I raised a threaded rod to insert it into the corner of the box, I heard a tiny thwack above me. Oops... Hello, ceiling fan.

Loretta the goldfish tried to warn me of the low-clearance, but I didn't listen.

Once all four walls were up and all the rods were in place, the lid and the accompanying plastic guide piece were added.  Great! The only step left was to insert the center steel rod...  

::THUD::

Oops... Hello, ceiling.

Not pictured: Loretta the goldfish laughing at my expense... Because she did try to warn me, after all.

I could not insert the center rod into the box at this angle. I had mentally prepared myself for situations where a cake might be too large for the CakeSafe, but I had not prepared myself for the possibility that my brand new CakeSafe might be too large for my workspace. Operation Scale Down officially needed to scale down. The irony pained my very soul. Look at this face. This is my PAINED SOUL face. It's the I-MEASURED-EVERYTHING-ELSE-WHY-DIDN'T-I-THINK-TO-MEASURE-MY-WORKSPACE-OVERHEAD-CLEARANCE face. 

Luckily, this assembly was a practice run, and this problem is not an unsolvable one. The box can be set safely on the ground or taken outside before installing the cake. And for the sculpted cakes which can't use the steel rod, this is not an issue. There are ways to work with these measurements! (There may also now be a tiny dent in my ceiling...)

And so, CakeSafe, I want to thank you again for making such an awesome product and for being such awesome people. I hope others can learn from my oversight, and that the customer service team will add this to the list of things customers should be aware of when purchasing your largest model.

Best Regards,

Allison