· 6 min read
Cake Delivery to Richmond, Kingston and Across Surrey
Most of our orders go to central London. A good number go a lot further, and the rules are slightly different once you leave the £12 zone.
Plenty of people assume a small Belgravia bakery only delivers within a mile or two. We go considerably further than that, and the rate outside central London is a flat £15 rather than a distance calculation.
This is the article for anybody in Richmond, Kingston, Esher, Guildford, Woking, Bromley, Croydon, Watford, Twickenham or anywhere else in the outer ring.
Where the £15 reaches
All London postcodes outside the central band, plus a long way into the surrounding counties.
KT for Kingston, Surbiton, Esher and Thames Ditton. GU for Guildford, Woking and Godalming. TW for Twickenham, Richmond and Hounslow. SM for Sutton and Carshalton. CR for Croydon. BR for Bromley. DA for Dartford. EN for Enfield. HA for Harrow. IG for Ilford. UB for Uxbridge. WD for Watford. SL for Slough and Windsor. RG for Reading and Bracknell.
That covers Surrey, a good deal of Kent, and much of the Home Counties. If your postcode is not obviously on that list, put it into the checkout and it will tell you rather than leaving you to guess.
Why it is a flat rate
Because the alternative is worse.
A per mile calculation would mean Guildford costing three times Richmond, which would put us out of reach for half the people reading this, and it would mean a customer cannot know what delivery costs until the last screen of the checkout.
A flat rate is slightly unfair to the person in Fulham and slightly generous to the person in Reading, and that trade is one we are happy with. Everybody knows what it costs before they start.
Planning further out
Two things change once you are outside the central postcodes, and neither is about the cake.
The window matters more. A delivery to Guildford sits inside a route with other drops, and the window you choose is doing real work. Choose one that ends well before you need the cake rather than one that finishes at the moment guests arrive.
And the notice period is worth taking more seriously. Forty eight hours is the minimum everywhere. For a date that cannot move, in a postcode an hour out, order as early as you reasonably can. Not because we will bake it any differently, but because the earlier an order is in the schedule, the more room there is to solve a problem if one appears.
What we cannot promise
An exact delivery time. This is worth stating clearly because it is the thing people most often expect and we most often cannot give.
Deliveries arrive within the window you choose at the checkout. We cannot tell you on the morning that the cake will arrive at ten past two, and if anybody in this trade tells you that for a drop in Surrey, they are guessing. The traffic between here and Kingston on a Friday afternoon is not a predictable quantity, and neither is how long the delivery before yours takes.
Plan around the window. It is the honest unit.
A note on bread
Bread is baked on Wednesdays only and needs 72 hours notice, which matters more the further out you are, because it means choosing a Wednesday that is at least three days away and building the rest of your order around that date.
If you want bread regularly, the bread round is the standing arrangement that removes the need to think about this every week.
Things that travel well
If your delivery is going a long way and the weather is warm, some choices are more forgiving than others.
Good travellers: the muraveynik, which is crumbs and caramel and is happy at room temperature for hours. The pirozhki and the hand pies. The dry pastries, oreshki and kurabye and peanut rings. The kartoshka. The bread.
Less forgiving: anything mounted with whipped cream, which means the strawberry cake, the pavlova and the meringue roll. Those are better ordered for a nearby address or for a day when the car is not sitting in sun.
Everything travels in a box, chilled where it needs to be, and nothing on this list is impossible to send to Surrey. It is simply worth knowing which choices give you the most margin.
What a national cake delivery service sends
If you have ordered a cake online before and it arrived by courier, it will have been one of a small number of types, and the reasons are structural.
Letterbox cakes and brownie boxes are shelf stable and flat. They survive anything and they have a shelf life of a week or more.
Iced celebration cakes sent by courier are usually covered in fondant or a firm buttercream, which is doing a structural job as much as a decorative one: it seals the sponge and protects the surface.
Frozen cakes shipped with coolant arrive frozen and you thaw them. For some cakes this is genuinely fine. For a layered cream cake it is the compromise described elsewhere in this journal.
None of those are what we make, and none of them could be delivered to a Surrey address in the state a honey cake needs to arrive in.
Delivering within London and the counties around it, in our own vehicle, on the date you chose, is a smaller offer than national delivery. It is also the only way the things we actually bake can reach anybody.
Common questions
How much is delivery to Surrey?
£15 flat, the same as everywhere outside the central London postcodes.
Do you deliver to Guildford and Woking?
Yes, GU postcodes are within the area. So are KT, TW, SM, CR, BR, DA, EN, HA, IG, UB, WD, SL and RG.
How do I know if my postcode is covered?
Enter it at the checkout. The delivery quote is worked out from the postcode rather than from a map you have to interpret.
Can you give me an exact delivery time?
No. Deliveries arrive within the window you choose. Traffic and the drops before yours make an exact time unreliable, and we would rather not promise one.
Is the minimum order different outside London?
No. £50 across the basket, everywhere.
How far ahead should I order?
Forty eight hours minimum, 72 for bread. For a fixed date further out, order as early as you can.
Ordering
Put your postcode into the checkout, choose a date at least two days ahead, and pick a window. The order is baked for that date.
Order it for the date you need
Everything here is baked to order for your date.
48 hours notice, 72 for bread. Delivered across London and Surrey.