The Frosting Event That Wasn’t

First, let me say this. Last Sunday I met Heather Saffer, a former winner of Cupcake Wars from Rochester and the creator of a new frosting called Dollop Frosting, which is being sold at all Wegmans now. She was nothing but lovely and nice and I even got a picture with her as she was exhibiting her frosting at Wegmans in Dewitt. That part was nice and I’m glad I got to meet her. I even bought some frosting, a flavor she calls hot chocolate, and my wife and I will be trying to figure out what we can use it on.

Now for the rest of the story. I heard about the frosting exhibit via Twitter from one of my local blogging buddies, who obviously knows of my love for frosting… okay, I love sweet things. He included her name on the tweet and she stopped by saying she couldn’t wait to meet me. Well, we all knew I was going after that.

As I mentioned earlier, the event was held at Wegmans in Dewitt, which I hadn’t been to in a few years, since I live in Liverpool. The parking lot was packed, and I thought to myself that this event was going to be packed, and hoped I’d get the opportunity to get close enough to meet her.

I walked in and had to get my bearings. I immediately went to the bakery area, where I didn’t see her, and asked someone where the frosting presentation was. The person I asked didn’t know anything about it. I decided to head to the service desk, thinking that in a store so large she could be almost anywhere.

I went to the service desk and asked where the frosting event was taking place. The person behind the desk had no idea what I was talking about. She asked the other folks behind the desk if they knew anything about it and they said no. She then picked up the phone and called someone, who eventually came to the desk and said she hadn’t heard of anything going on in the store but would make a call. The first person she called knew nothing. The second person she called knew something about it and said it was in Aisle 17B.

I started to believe this wasn’t going to be what I was thinking it was going to be and I was right. At the end of the aisle there was Heather and a guy whose name I never asked (shame on me) putting frosting on pretzels or on a spoon and in a tiny paper dish. They had a little sign and some of the frosting tubs and that was pretty much it. I did the meet and greet and less than 5 minutes later I was on my way back home; no event, no presentation. That was kind of a downer.

Why did I expect a presentation? Because I did some research on her before I went and saw that in the Rochester area there were stories in the newspapers about some of the stores she visited and mentions of her giving talks on winning Cupcake Wars, and I thought the same was going to happen at Dewitt, our largest Wegmans store in the area. As I was leaving I thought about the wide dichotomy between the Wegmans in Penfield doing a full press release on her and the employees in Dewitt not even knowing she was in the store; isn’t that kind of sad?

Oh well, I got some frosting and got to meet a very nice person who I hope does well as time goes on. Still, I lament the lost opportunity for a local Wegmans to highlight someone relatively local who won a national competition that led to a product being sold in their stores. During the short time I was there I noticed people were surprised to see someone passing out samples of frosting, and not many people at that. This could have been big, should have been big.

Hopefully someone will learn from something like this and make changes so they don’t miss great opportunities to highlight themselves and their guests. Both would have benefited and I’m thinking a lot more people would have shown up to glory in the stories of a champion.

At least that’s how my mind is going to see it.