Frequently Asked Questions
1. What makes you qualified to write cupcake reviews?
Absolutely nothing. None of us have any kind of formal culinary education, though many of us enjoy baking for fun. (You can see some of our gastronomical experiments in the gallery.) It is not our intention to pass ourselves off as experts in the field; rather we aim to represent the average palette of Joe Q. Customer. You can think of Cupcake Fetish as a specialized Yelp, or the Amazon.com review community, but for cupcakes.
2. How do you rate cupcakes?
Cupcakes are given an overall rating on a scale from 1 to 5 with 1 being negative and 5 being positive. The interpretation of the scale is left largely to individual reviewers; some reviewers give out higher ratings more sparingly than others. The procedure for reviewing a cupcake is also left up to the individual reviewers. Some reviewers eat the whole cupcake and then write down their thoughts. Other reviewers dissect the cupcake, sampling the cake and frosting separately, and then together, taking copious notes the entire time. Keep in mind that everyone's palette and preferences are different; just because a cupcake gets a low review from one reviewer doesn't mean it isn't good, or that another reviewer wouldn't rate it higher.
3. How many Cupcake Fetish reviewers are there?
Currently there are 9 active cupcake critics, scattered throughout the United States and Canada.
4. Do you make any money off of this?
We wish! In actuality we spend a fair bit of money on this. The average gourmet cupcake is between $2-$3, and we've reviewed almost 300 of them. You do the math.
5. How come you don't use your real names? Why do you cover your faces in photos?
We originally adopted pseudonyms and obscured our faces so that the employees of local bakeries that we frequent wouldn't recognize us, on the rare offhand chance that they ever stumbled across this website. The local cupcake purveyors are smart cookies, and have long since figured out who we are. We still do it mostly because Violet really enjoys making the little cupcake icons.
6. Do you tell stores that you'll be reviewing them before or during your visit?
No! We're not gourmet food critics, we're just average people, and our goal is to review the "average customer experience". We don't want to bias our experiences or reviews in any way, so we never inform stores that we'll be visiting. If people see us taking notes and shooting pictures and ask us if we're reviewers, we typically say that we're just big cupcake fans and like to blog about cupcakes (which is the truth!).
7. Some of the information you posted on my store's profile page is out of date or incorrect.
Will you fix it?
Sure! E-mail us the correct info and we'd be happy to change it.
8. There are pictures of my store on your website. Will you remove them?
We are very careful when it comes to posting pictures of stores as we understand that many bakeries do not want photos of their retail space published. We always ask an employee for permission before we take photos. If there has been some misunderstanding and you would like pictures of your store removed from our website, we will be happy to take down photos of the interior of your store.
Legally speaking, photographers have a right to shoot and publish photos of any place that's open to the public, whether or not it's on private property, as long as there is no reasonable expectation of the right to privacy. This includes malls, shopping centers, stores, lobbies of office buildings, etc. The general rule of thumb is "if you have permission to enter, you have the legal right to shoot photos." (For more information, see this handy article by Andrew Kantor.) That said, we're not interested in being jerks, so if you would like us to remove photos of the interior of your retail space, we would be happy to do so.
9. I don't like what you wrote about my store/cupcakes. Will you change/remove the review?
Sorry, but no. We rarely modify reviews, and only if we've gotten a piece of factual information incorrect, such as the name of the cupcake, or the ingredients it contains.
10. Can I be a reviewer for Cupcake Fetish?
If you live in a city that we don't already have covered, e-mail us some sample reviews. We'll go from there.
