Calgary Food Blogger Bake Sale Recap (featuring blurry cell phone pictures!)

Thank you!!!

I am happy to announce that this past weekend, the Calgary Food Blogger Bake Sale raised just under $1,200 for Calgary Meals on Wheels! Thanks to all of you who came down to grab a sweet treat, or simply threw some loose change into our donations jar.

I can literally write an entire blog post thanking my wonderful team of bloggers for turning my random little idea into a success - thank you all for being so enthusiastic about the project from the get-go; thank you for taking time out of your busy lives to bake your little butts off before and during the weekend of the event; thank you for driving short and long distances to drop off your delicious treats (even when I wasn't home!); thank you for your graphic designing capabilities (because I don't have any) in designing a simple yet effective poster; thank you for posting about this event on your blog (even if you couldn't make it!), or talking about it on the radio, or getting it into local papers so that your legions of adoring fans will come down with cookbooks for you to sign and (for some of you) thank you for putting up with me for two hours at a time! Thank you, just thank you.

Thanks to B. for popping in multiple times during the course of the weekend, for organizing all the baked goods in our "stock room pile", and essentially keeping me sane so I didn't embarrass myself in public!

Thanks to my mom (Mama T) for donating $100 for a box of baked goods that is now on our kitchen counter! (She didn't end up bringing them to her party.) And also thank you for washing the dishes that I was too lazy to wash right away... (I'm a terrible daughter, I know.)

And of course, thanks to Market Collective for choosing the Calgary Food Blogger Bake Sale out of their pile of vendor applications and for giving me a table with so much storage space at the back!

In case you missed it, we had a pretty sweet set up at the Market Collective, offering a variety of delicious cookies, tarts, squares, cakes, bars and my muffins (which, sadly, didn't seem very popular).

People seemed to go for novelties like Jen's Applewood Smoked Bacon Chocolate Cookies, Dan's London Fog cookies, Claire's Summer Camp S'Mores Bars and all the gluten-free treats. On the flip side, classics also sold out quickly, like Zoey's lemon squares and essentially all cookies and brownies. And of course, we had people specifically come down and ask, "What did Julie van Rosendaal make?"

Jen's now famous Applewood Smoked Bacon Chocolate Cookies and her equally creative Chocolate Espresso Vodka Bundt Cakes with Amarula Cream Cheese Frosting

Reading about other food blogger bake sales was definitely a helpful planning strategy - somehow I managed to remember to bring tongs, posters, plastic bags (not enough), a cash float (too much) and supplies to make signs and labels. Asking people to wrap their stuff was the best idea ever, especially since there were times when our storage space was stacked quite precariously.

I also learned to be flexible; while my original idea was to have four price points and just label everything with coloured stickers, this did not work as nearly everyone said, "I don't know how much I want it to cost - I'll see what everyone else is charging." I had to scramble to come up with prices (which were a little inconsistent early on Saturday) and what I also figured out was that people tend to buy things that are labelled because they know what they are. So next time, I will make labels for everything beforehand as much as possible.

Next time, I will also listen to B. when he says he estimates probably about 1%, maybe maximum 3% of people will buy something. Then I won't scare people into baking six catering trays worth of stuff just because the organizers expected 2500-3000 people to go through the event and be saddled with a trunk full of leftovers, or make photocopies of blog lists in size 8 font that people simply pick up and put down.

One good thing that came out of all those leftovers though, was that we were able to help out another local charity! The DI (aka the Calgary Drop-In and Rehab Centre) accepted all our sweet treats with open arms! They take donations of all kinds (right now undies are in high demand) and will also pick up larger household items.

All in all, I think everyone will agree that it was a fun and successful event - watch for us to have another bake sale again or possibly other foodie events in the future!