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Order goodies through new e-bakery site
Wednesday, May 31, 2000
Jim Mc Mahon, Tri-State Sports & News Service
Bethel Bakery has long been on the leading edge of innovative methods to expand product line and improve customer service.
In 1994, it introduced CakeKit, a service that provides ready-to-decorate cakes for delivery across the country. In 1997, it was among the first locally to offer picture cakes.
This week, the family-owned business, located on Brightwood Road for all but three of 45 years, introduced an e-bakery Web site.
The site, designed by BurbNet Inc. of Bridgeville, allows Internet confection connoisseurs comfort and convenience of placing orders for all of their goodies online.
"We are really excited about this," said John Walsh, 43, president of the business his father started in 1955.
Response to the initial cake Web site, introduced last June, convinced him a full-line product Web site could be a success.
"We've been averaging four or five cake orders per day from our Web site," said Walsh, whose four full-time and four part-time cake decorators perform their handiwork on several hundred cakes each week.
Walsh said the family business employs 65 people. Helping are brother Tom, the production manager, and sister Christine, who directs sales and customer service. Walsh's dad, 71, though officially retired, remains on call.
"That's great!" Cleah Schlueter of Forest Hills said when told of the new Web site. "I can't wait to check it out and place an order."
Schlueter was the bakery's first online cake customer on the first day it was posted on the Internet. "We were really shocked to receive an order so quickly," Walsh said.
Schlueter was surfing the Internet from her Pittsburgh workplace in hopes the bakery had such a site. She ordered a special picture cake for the 81st birthday of her mother, Velma Kuehn, who lives in Green Tree.
"Our new Web site includes virtually all the products you can purchase in our store," said Walsh, who believes the bakery is the first in the Pittsburgh area to offer such a sophisticated and complete e-business site.
Customers can find their products by type of item or by using online search capabilities. The site also provides numerous custom-cake designs for decorated cakes.
The site recalculates additional purchases and provides a total price the customer pays online with credit cards.
But the store doesn't provide shipping and delivery of these orders.
Customers must pick them up at the bakery. Orders placed before 2 p.m. will be available after 2 p.m. the following day. The bakery is closed Sunday.
To encourage use of the new site, the bakery is offering a half-dozen cookies free for a limited time to all first-time Internet customers. The e-bakery site is http://www.bethelbakery.com.
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