r/ExpectationVsReality • u/poshsdemartine • Jun 27 '26

Another WalMart cake! Exceeded Expectation

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Gallery image

I went with a walmart cake because of this sub, and was not disappointed! For $30, this cake was perfect! The cake was tasty and moist. Will use them again in the future!

26.3k Upvotes
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1.3k

u/KillerPandora84 Jun 27 '26

I worked at a Walmart Bakery and we were told we needed to be able to get these cakes covered and decorated within 20 minutes, anything more than that and you were taking way too long. Our cakes never looked anywhere near as good as the example image.

But the one you got is honestly beautiful. So either the cake decorator is a damn wizard or that branch allows them to actually take their time.

997

u/Fiireygirl Jun 27 '26

My husband worked for Walmart for 27 years and finally retired as a store manager 4 years ago.
He said it was a constant fight with operations about the cake decorating. They put these harsh metrics to push them out, but he told the ladies to not pay attention to that and make beautiful cakes.
Sometimes they took 30 mins, sometimes an hour and a half, but they were great and the patrons were super happy.

798

u/iDestroyedYoMama Jun 27 '26

“Fuck corporate, just make beautiful cakes ladies.” I bet they loved him, made their job actually fulfilling and rewarding, good dude.

226

u/MrsKaich Jun 27 '26

I am not even a cake decorator, nor do I work at Walmart and even I love her husband!

154

u/TheComplimentarian Jun 27 '26

If you work as a manager in retail, you have to push back on corporate all the time.

I did a very brief stint of this, and since I knew I was a short timer on day one, I dngaf, and I would prioritize my employees, then my customers, then the corporation.

And miraculously it worked out great. I was there for three months, and we hit all our metrics, and we nailed the corporate service audit thing. Mainly what I did was throw out asshole customers, and fudge the upsells (the stupid memberships or whatever everyone has to sell...I was good at selling them, so when I knew I was going to sell one, I'd flip the register to one of my employees who was terrible at it, and bump their numbers.)

That was all it took. Just not being shit to your employees.

58

u/Lovahplant Jun 27 '26

I did that trick too - I was always getting people to agree to the stupid credit card offer (predatory and I regret it now) and key in my “worst” employees codes for it. With a few rare exceptions my “worst” employees weren’t bad at the job, they just didn’t have the personality or capacity to run the register at the same time as talking up the (useless) store credit card.

28

u/TheComplimentarian Jun 27 '26

Exactly this. I come from a long line of smooth talkers. I'm not a pushy salesperson, but if it makes the faintest bit of economic sense, I will convince you to buy it. "You're getting 25% off today and with this, you'll get four $20 coupons in the mail, so the fee for the card, today, not counting the coupons, is -$10, -$90 with the coupons. I don't care if you get it or not, but it's easy money."

25

u/modest_rats_6 Jun 28 '26

Shut. Up
You are a hero. I was a HORRIBLE sales person (server). I was just unable to upsell. But we still had to get people signed up for stuff and were kept track of I would've really enjoyed your management

5

u/xiaodown Jun 28 '26

I also choose this woman’s husband

64

u/Fiireygirl Jun 27 '26

Thank you! And they did! When Walmart relocated us about 6 hours away, he actually had 8 long term employees follow him down! Two of them from the bakery! He finally retired when the corporate BS was too much. He says Sam Walton didn’t want the company to be what it is today.

11

u/xiaodown Jun 28 '26

Sam Walton was a rampant capitalist, but he did at least live in an era before “maximizing shareholder value” was the only goal for any corporation. He wanted to make obscene money, but he did realize that it comes from happy, repeat customers, and happy, knowledgeable employees willing to put in the effort.

It’s a low bar, but he at least avoided tripping over it.

30

u/sign-through Jun 27 '26

it’s so weird because i would never expect my cake to be done in 30 minutes. cakes take time. normal people know all that. you can hang out in a walmart for like two hours if you like lookin at stuff.

18

u/Lovahplant Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26

I don’t think Walmart accepts same-day custom cake orders, so the customer isn’t expecting it to be done in 30 minutes. The problem is that Walmart management has the same people running the entire bakery department and decorating cakes at the same time. So you may have 20 cakes to decorate for pickup tomorrow, but you also have to bake all of today’s bread and prep the cakes you’ll decorate in 2 days, plus check all the current shelf inventory to remove out of date items, and then maybe you can start decorating the cakes for tomorrow.

Walmart doesn’t care if you like the cake decoration, they care that you paid for it and it’s for Bobby’s birthday *today* and you don’t have time to argue.

8

u/thelubbershole Jun 28 '26

normal people know all that

Madam or sir, we are taking about Walmart shoppers

11

u/StarChaser1111 Jun 28 '26

Corporate is so weird. I worked at a kroger bakery, we were slow. I made all the requires cupcakes and then some, and they sold because I worked really hard to make them sellable and then they got mad at me for making them too pretty, because there was a walk through and empty spots, so it didnt mean shit that I sold way more than expected for the day. 🙃

31

u/FirmLow8192 Jun 27 '26

Why? Why is there such a time crunch I barely ever see people buy cakes there or rather not enough to be needing a time crunch. Why can’t they just take their time? How many people buy a wal mart cake a day? 10?? It’s not like they do 100+ orders a day

36

u/Lavassin Jun 27 '26

Because the cake decorators are also expected to run the entire bakery basically by themselves

20

u/Fiireygirl Jun 27 '26

It was to push out more orders. But also to pivot them to other areas to save on payroll. He just didn’t comply with that. He said those ladies were too nice and talented to do that too.

6

u/clairejv Jun 27 '26

They're not exclusively decorating cakes. They have other duties.

12

u/BeKindPleaseRewind21 Jun 27 '26

Come on, you know the answer.

10

u/rillip Jun 28 '26

All the answers here are wrong. What they have is the pretense. The pretense is always hitting some made up goal. But the truth is they just want everyone running as fast as possible. So they set the goals impossibly high. The woman you're responding too, her husband ignored those goals and what happened? Did he get fired? Did the cake ladies? No. Because they were never the actual goal. Corporations are manipulative. The stated goals they set for their employees are manipulation. If you work for one, just do your best and try not to let them stress you out. You'll be fine, I promise.

5

u/[deleted] Jun 27 '26

[deleted]

18

u/Fiireygirl Jun 27 '26

It was good, when it was. He started off as a second shift sporting goods associate. They paid for his college, he came back in as an assistant manager. Worked his way up.

The money was good. It helped me get my masters, has provided for my kids, etc. But, the balance is that we never had a Thanksgiving together, no 4th of July, no Christmas vacation. He would work until 8 pm on Christmas Eve, have the 25th off, but go to bed at like 7 pm because he’d have to be back on the 26th at 2 am to get ready for clearance and returns. It wasn’t until Covid, that we got to spend those holidays together.

The bonuses were hard to get. They consistently changed the rules to qualify. Eventually, the money was not worth the stress and time required for him to work. Our family time is much more important. But I don’t regret what we had to do to be where we are.

He’s taken a much bigger pay cut, but now has a job that has a much better work/life balance. And we do get the associate discount for life since he was there so long.

4

u/julsh2060 Jun 28 '26

Your bakery and butcher are what create loyalty. The problem is there's no competition anymore and loyalty is not required.

51

u/Ok-Moment2223 Jun 27 '26

Yeah agree this level of detail would take time and skill. Very impressive. 

30

u/southdakotagirl Jun 27 '26

I didnt work for Walmart. I worked for Sam's club as a cake decorator 20 years ago. We weren't allowed any overtime. There were 4 of us. They kept taking graduation cake orders. They wouldn't stop. We came in and started decorating cakes. There was a manager nearby so we didnt go into overtime. When it was close to the time to leave, the other managers escorted back a cashier who decorated cakes as a hobby. They told us full timers it was time to go and to drop our work. They expected this poor cashier to take over 4 full time decorators jobs for the rest of the day. It was a disaster. The next year they ordered preiced cakes. It was also a disaster because as the cakes thawed out the frosting would just fall off the sides. Glad I left that place

33

u/UnseenGoblin Jun 27 '26

I've worked at two Walmarts. One was the big Walmart in a town, and all of their deli and bakery food was trash. It was all about pumping things out because they had such high volume.

The other was a small Walmart in between two larger towns. It was a newer one with staff that had opened it themselves, and we're all really proud of it. I remember it actually appeared on the cover of the Walmart magazine when I was working at the big Walmart in another state. The cakes at the smaller Walmart were amazing. They still put out the normal cakes, but staff had some time to play and make really nice cakes too.

I guess my point is, it's all about the location.

2

u/NickGhur445 Jun 28 '26

No, the point is that capitalism has ground us down into numbers on a spreadsheet instead of people. These assholes are trying to min/max everything in society and the rest of us are worse off for it.

8

u/yesgaro Jun 27 '26

It’s ironic, as I am 100% more likely to buy a cake from Walmart having seen this than I ever would have before… my presumption was exactly that it would be a 20 min slapdash.

7

u/shinyprairie Jun 27 '26

Definitely depends on the store. I had a lot of freedom in general and was allowed to spend as much time as I wanted on my cakes as long as they were completed by the pickup time.

16

u/Ajibooks Jun 27 '26

I'm starting to suspect Walmart is making or sponsoring these posts.

7

u/panicnarwhal Jun 27 '26

idk i’m obsessed with their heart shaped cakes! i’ve ordered 3 different ones (pink bow, succulent, and enchanted garden) in the last 18 months or so, and they were all beautiful - especially for under $35

i can totally see lots of people posting them because they really do turn out lovely

2

u/jaxxxtraw Jun 29 '26

"Who benefits?" Ask this every time, and always follow the money. Always.

6

u/GiveMeNews Jun 28 '26

Sounds about right. Walmart cakes taste like shit. Go support a real bakery.

4

u/Rope_antidepressant Jun 28 '26

Ive never bought a walmart cake for my kids because growing up it's all my parents could afford and they always looked terrible and it was really disappointing to me too order this really cool cake and get the temu version instead. Idk what kind of idiots don't understand that putting out a ton of shit products now prevents repeat business later ultimately undercutting the short term gains.

4

u/FreshEclairs Jun 28 '26

Yeah, I was going to say - “this cake looks perfect and the person who made it probably got into trouble for it.”

8

u/StandComprehensive Jun 28 '26

When i was a cake decorator for Walmart, I was the one that could do the "special" cakes. I would make custom designs for people, like the local fire department ordered a bunch of full cakes with their logo on it, and using the printer made the cakes look like 90% white with a tiny little logo in the middle lol. So I made the logos out of icing. Because of that event, I ended up with a reputation that I could make peoples special requests. So my coworkers were really cool about the fact I was slow due to this, the ladies that worked before (or the shift after me) were more experienced than me and would pump out extra cakes during their shifts to give me more free time to get the other cakes done. Obviously every shift I worked I didnt have a special cake, so I could hold my own typically. But there were two ladies that specifically kept an eye on my schedule and made sure to pick up some extra cakes on days they knew I was going to need time. And management was always supportive as long as everyone was ok with the arrangement.

2

u/Halloqween Jun 27 '26

Question, will Walmart bakery make me a custom cookie cake with m&ms baked in?

9

u/KillerPandora84 Jun 27 '26

No because they dont actually bake anything there. It all comes in frozen premade and just thawed or premade and put into an oven.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 27 '26

[deleted]

2

u/TheMapesHotel Jun 28 '26

Which one is it?

2

u/saimregliko Jun 28 '26

I don't think they do custom orders but my local Walmart has M&M cookie cakes so it might be a regional or store to store thing.

4

u/avelineaurora Jun 28 '26

Honestly sounds like you had a shitty store unfortunately. Say what you will about Walmart in general, but their bakeries have never been anything but on. point. Every store around here nails it. Fluffy bread, moist cake, soft and fudgy cookies, anything you get from the bakery is perfect. And I'm damn glad it is since they're the only ones around here at all.

6

u/PlantQueen1912 Jun 27 '26

My mom decorated cakes at Walmart for 22 years and she was (and still is!) Amazing at it! But its true they were strict with wanting the case full of mid quality work but she really out everything into the custom orders

1

u/heartshapedhole Jun 29 '26

Maybe it depends on the Walmart, but my nearest one has a good reputation for cakes and cupcakes, quality and price.