Everyone loves a cupcake. And our guest today, Matt Teske from Cupcake Royale, brings some tasty tips on how they use WooCommerce on their site and how selling online for delivery and pickup also is growing interest in more people to come to one of their physical locations around Seattle, Washington for a treat and some coffee.

We chatted about:

Why they moved online and if WooCommerce was their first choice.Some of the challenges they faced and if WooCommerce met them.The most effective way they have found to advertise their website and stores.The differences in their sales when it comes to delivery or pickup.Their largest order to date.

Transcript

Bob Dunn: Hey everyone, and welcome to episode 25 of Do the Woo, a podcast for WooCommerce shop owners. Bob Dunn here, also known as BobWP on the web. Today we are talking about something we all love, and that is cupcakes. Yummy, yummy cupcakes. In fact, I can safely say that I have personally enjoyed the delight from our guest today, Matt Teske from Cupcake Royale, based in Seattle, Washington. Welcome to today's show, Matt.

Matt Teske: Oh, thank you for having me on.

Bob Dunn: You bet, and I also wanted to throw in that I had the chance to hear Matt talk about his WooCommerce adventures a couple of times at the Seattle WooCommerce meetup, so I have heard a bit of his challenges and his love of WooCommerce, and obviously that is where I tasted his treats. In fact, nothing like some leftovers I was able to snag and take home. The good stuff. My wife was like, "Oh, what are those, what are those?" They didn't last very long around here.

Matt Teske: I imagine.

Bob Dunn:

I want you to tell us a little bit about Cupcake Royale, what you do there, what you sell? All that good stuff.

Matt Teske: Sure, well we are a local dessert bakery and café in the Seattle area. We have been around for about 13 years. We started in 2003. We currently have 7 locations. We do a strong retail sales as well as wholesale, and we do some customer delivery, so we will deliver to your home, and that is powered through the online store with WooCommerce. Our owner, Jodi Hall, she is pretty active in the Seattle social scene and activism scene, but she was originally employed as a marketing person at Starbucks, and she just felt like she wanted to get back to what they started as, which was just the experience of being at a café in the community.

Our company's mission statement is to create joyful experiences, and that is with cupcakes (obviously), with coffee, just with our interactions with people, how we interact with the community. We do a lot of donations and things like that. Just the events that we support and causes that we get behind, it’s been a great place to work. We have about 100 employees across those 7 channels, and it is continuing to grow. It is a good climate for cupcakes right now. It seems like it always is. It is definitely a comfort food. We've expanded into ice cream and donuts and things like that in the last couple years just to keep up with all the demand for sweets in Seattle and beyond.

Bob Dunn: Wow, everybody loves a cupcake. There's no doubt about that.

Matt Teske: Yeah, that's nice. It's nice to work at a place where pretty much everybody that comes in has a smile on their face when they leave.

Bob Dunn: Definitely. When did you move to online ordering, and was it a decision to use WooCommerce then, or did that come down the road?

Matt Teske: We originally set up our online ordering in 2010. I am not even sure if WooCommerce was around then. I think WooCommerce has done about, is it 8 years or am I ...?

Bob Dunn: Actually WooCommerce was released I think late 2011.

Matt Teske: Okay, so it wasn't even an option at the time, and we were still a younger company at the time. It was originally a platform that was built for production bakeries, so if you have your bread company or things li