Blog 16 Answer 2

1. My essential question is, “How best might a cake decorator fulfill customers expectations while maintaining a viable business?”
2. My first answer is, “A successful cake decorator must be able to establish and maintain a well rounded relationship with their customer.”
3. My second answer is, “A successful cake decorator should create a positive work environment for their employees.”
4. List three reasons your answer is true with a real-world application for each.
1. Organization establishes clear deadlines and goals.
1. A successful bakery is one that gives both great customer service and employee service.
2. Proper organization and delegation outlines what role each member plays in the staff.
1. In government, every level of senator and official and leader has a certain, specific job they must accomplish. One person can’t maintain government spending, deal with foreign affairs, handle internal scandals, and city infrastructure issues all at once, so the work is delegated.
3. Communication, especially when utilizing time and keeping up-to-date and constantly aware of dates, deadlines, and orders
1. When you have a group project, you always need people to communicate. Then, the group will know when meetings are, whether or not someone can make it to the meeting, what work needs to be done, and similar group project happenings.
5. "Business Resolutions to Create the Best Odds for Success in 2013: Part 1."
6. This with the help of my mentor helped me discover my second answer.
7. Discovering this second answer has brought me so much closer to finding my last and final answer which I'm kind of sad about.

Blog 15: Independent Component 2 Approval

Content:

1.  Describe in detail what you plan to do for your 30 hours.
I plan on creating a business plan for the bakery that I mentor at. I will also do research on pricing cakes and start pricing cakes at the bakery and figure out if it is a profitable price. I will do that by calculating the amount of materials and ingredients the cake contains in a spreadsheet.

2.  Discuss how or what you will do to meet the expectation of showing 30 hours of evidence.
I will log my hours and take pictures. I will also have a typed business plan and a spreadsheet on the data I collected from the ingredients put into each cake.

3.  And explain how what you will be doing will help you explore your topic in more depth.
This will help me by identifying if having a business plan is essential to be a profitable cake decorator. As well as if making a spreadsheet and calculating the probable profit on each cake is important in todays economy.

4.  Post a log on the right hand side of your blog near your other logs and call it the independent component 2 log.

Blog 14: Independent Component 1

Content: 

LITERAL

(a) Statement saying: “I, Vincent Zepeda affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.”

(b) Cite your source regarding who or what article or book helped you complete the independent component

"Cake Boss" by Buddy Valastro really helped me with my independent component because it helped me evaluate what factor pertain to his success in making a mass amount of profit as a cake decorator in today's economy along with customer relationship. It also helped give me ideas of experiments that I could try out in my mentorship to identify what is most important in a small business. 

(c) Provide a digital spreadsheet (aka log of the 30 hours).   Post it next to your mentorship log.

( its under "Links")

(d) Explanation of what you completed.  
Throughout my independent I helped out with decorating a lot of cakes and designing quite a few on paper. I also helped with attending customers and sitting in on consultations my mentor had with her clients. I also started looking into what materials where put into making the cake and how much it cost, then i estimated how much it could be priced according to the articles I had read. I also helped arrange cakes into a great presentation layout for customers to admire.

INTERPRETIVE

Defend your work and explain how the significant parts of your component and how it demonstrates 30 hours of work.   Provide evidence (photos, transcript, art work, videos, etc) of the 30 hours of work.

In the beginning of my Independent Component I just started doing basic stuff like Practicing piping and molding fondant. After I got my solid Essential Question I started focusing more on how the bakery that I attend, tends to their customers. I  also did some experiments by comparing our regular standard cupcake to our gourmet cupcakes, was that the cupcakes that had a theme or some type of design were priced more than the plain ones. In the end I noticed that the cupcakes that looked like there was more effort put into them (gourmet) sold more than those that had no design. I also noticed that when a small child would walk by and see them they would ask their parents and what I found was that these cupcakes were mainly aimed to a younger customer base.  I also helped design some cakes, that are displayed below and I helped decorate them a bit. At times I had to be by the register and speak with customers and focus on prices of products.