Where We Deliver, and What It Costs

We bake in Belgravia, in SW1, and deliver from there. This sets out where we go, what it costs and what actually makes a delivery succeed or fail, which is rarely the distance.

The fees

£12 within SW3. That is Chelsea, and it is close enough to us to cost less.

£15 everywhere else we cover. One flat fee, whether you are in Clerkenwell or in Guildford.

A flat fee across such a wide area means the near deliveries subsidise the far ones. We prefer that to a sliding scale, which would mean somebody in Watford paying £30 and deciding, quite reasonably, not to bother.

Where we go

Every London postcode. All of E and EC, all of N and NW, all of SE and SW, all of W and WC. Whitechapel, Shoreditch, Canary Wharf, Stratford, Islington, Camden, Hampstead, St John's Wood, the City, Clerkenwell, Bloomsbury, Covent Garden, Kensington, Chelsea, Belgravia, Battersea, Clapham, Wandsworth, Wimbledon, Hammersmith, Paddington, Maida Vale.

Surrey. KT for Kingston, Surbiton and Esher. GU for Guildford and Woking. SM for Sutton. TW for Twickenham and Richmond.

Kent and the south east. BR for Bromley, CR for Croydon, DA for Dartford and Bexley.

North and west. EN for Enfield and Barnet, HA for Harrow and Wembley, IG for Ilford and Woodford, UB for Uxbridge, WD for Watford and Rickmansworth, SL for Slough and Windsor, RG for Reading, Bracknell and Wokingham.

If your postcode is covered, the checkout will accept it and show the fee. If it is not, the checkout will tell you at that point rather than taking the order and working it out afterwards.

How things are packed

Cakes go in a rigid box, on a board, with the box sized so the cake cannot slide. Movement is what damages a cake, not vibration, so the aim is to stop it travelling within its own box.

Anything with a poured glaze, the Prague and the Bird's Milk in particular, is set fully before boxing. A glaze that has not set will mark against a box lid and arrive with a print on it.

The pavlova is the difficult one. Meringue under cream is fragile in every direction and it is packed with more room around it than anything else we send.

Pastries and biscuits go in boxes with dividers where they need them. Oreshki and trubochki both travel badly loose and are packed to stop them knocking together.

Bread goes in paper, not plastic, for the reason that plastic softens a crust within an hour.

Timing

We deliver during the day. You choose the date at checkout, not a time slot, and we will contact you on the day to arrange when.

Order for the day before your event. This is the advice we repeat more than any other. Almost everything is fine or better after a night in a fridge, and waiting for a van on the morning of a party is a wholly avoidable stress.

The exceptions are choux, the pavlova, the tarts and anything with fresh cream, which should be ordered for the day they are eaten.

What actually goes wrong

Almost never the distance. Guildford is no more difficult than Islington. What goes wrong is one of four things.

Nobody is in. These are not doorstep items. A cake left in the sun for three hours is not a cake any more. A mobile number that is answered on the day fixes this and nothing else does.

A building nobody can get into. Concierges, entry systems, gated developments, office security desks. If there is anything at all unusual about getting to your door, put it in the notes at checkout. A courier standing outside a locked lobby will not solve it by thinking harder.

An office address with no name on it. Buildings with a security desk will not accept a box addressed to a company alone. Full name and mobile number, and the floor if there is one.

A gift sent with the sender's number rather than the recipient's. We then cannot reach the person who will actually be in. If you are sending a gift, give us their mobile.

If something arrives wrong

Send us a photograph on the day.

Vans stop suddenly and occasionally something shifts inside its box despite the packing. We would much rather hear about it while the day is still running than have you decide privately that we are not very good at this.

The photograph matters because it tells us whether the fault was the packing, the driver or the making, which are three different problems with three different fixes.

Getting a cake from the door to the table

Two minutes of care at your end protects the two days at ours.

Keep it flat and keep it in the box until you need it. The box is doing real work and a cake carried on a lap in a warm car is a cake with the filling at one side.

Get it into a fridge, and check there is room before the delivery rather than after. An 18 cm cake in a box takes more space than people picture, and rearranging a full fridge with guests arriving is an unnecessary way to start an evening.

Then take it out again twenty minutes before you cut it. Cold flattens flavour in almost everything and it is worst in anything with buttercream.

Collection

There is no shop and no counter, so there is nothing to collect from in the ordinary sense.

For wedding and event orders we do consultations in Belgravia by appointment, and collection can sometimes be arranged as part of that conversation. For a standard order, delivery is the only route.

The minimum

£50 on all orders. Below that the delivery costs more than the margin on what is in the box.

Most orders clear it easily. If yours does not, kurabye at £15, oat cookies at £20 or the chocolate selection at £15 are the cheapest ways to get there, and all three keep for a week, so nothing is wasted in getting over the line.

Bird's Milk Cakefrom £78Cake “Charodeyka”£61

Ordering

48 hours notice on everything, 72 hours on bread, and bread only on Wednesdays. Choose your date at checkout, put in a mobile number that will be answered, and add anything unusual about access to the notes.