Haydel's Bakery — Restaurant in Louisiana

I used to order cakes from Haydel's bakery every year. Last year I ordered my son's Birthday cake per usual. However, I could not pick it up on time due to our then 6mo old having a hard time. It would not have been in her best interest to lock her in the carseat and drive so far since we live in Gretna. She was being fussy and clingy and only wanted to be near me. This was not normal behavior for her so I made the decision to pick up the cake on the following Tuesday when Haydel would reopen. No worries....except my cake order was wrong. My son had just turned 10 and what a sweetheart he is. He was so understanding about why his cake would be late but was looking forward to it. My husband brings the cake home on Tuesday and I'm like we can't give a 10 year old a cake with roses on it. We requested baloons. As well, we had requested that the cake say Happy 10th Birthday Nikoe and it only said Happy Birthday Nikoe. The "Happy Birthday" was drawn nicely. However, his name was drawn quite pitifully. After sending an email and explaining all that was wrong, Ashley offered me a $15 discount on the cake for not adding the "10th Birthday" part on the cake. She said the roses were simply a misunderstanding. How does anyone mix roses with baloons??? I have no idea. Everyone knows that a Birthday cake is a 1st impression item. We were already delivering the cake to my son late but to have it look pitiful and with roses on it was not something that we wanted to subject him too. He needs to know that his day is special and his cake should reflect that. It really wasn't about the money for us so we denied the $15 dollar discount since she refused to redo the cake and we have found somewhere else to order our family cakes from. After years of only ordering Haydel's we were extremely disappointed at how we were disregarded. The entire cake went in the garbage on trash day and we took our big boy out to his favorite restaurant. Shame on Haydel for throwing away...

We've been getting a large, custom designed cake for my son's birthday party for the last 5 years. Every time, it turned out perfectly. We would call in advance and describe the theme and what we were looking for. They would take notes and give input and each time they nailed it. This year, we called to place our order and were rudely told that they don't do custom designs anymore. We could send pictures of a cake another baker designed and they would copy it, but because of past customers that were unhappy, the owners decided to no longer do custom designs. While it felt a bit sleazy stealing from other bakeries, we put together some pictures of what we had in mind and emailed it over. A different person called back and was much more pleasant. They went over what they were planning for the cake with a lot of great ideas that would have been perfect. One of the pictures we had sent was a picture of the cake they did for us last year where we pointed out something that they did that we liked. Well when we picked up this year's cake, they had copied last year's entire cake exactly. Nothing to do with this year's theme. None of the details that they had told us they were planning. We picked the cake up the morning of the party, so no real options. We put our own topper on it, but we still had multiple people notice that it was the same cake from last year. After this experience, we'll probably be going elsewhere going forward. It's a shame because this was our favorite bakery to visit when we're in town. When the topic came up at the party, there were multiple people who said they stopped going in the last year or two because quality has been dropping with the focus on expanding and marketing. It seems like they're more focused on the hand pie business now while their core product lineup is suffering. I'll be crossing my fingers that Hubig's opens back up so that Haydels can get back...

When you have the good fortune to be widely considered the best at what you do, what a moment! Haydel's bakery makes one fine king cake to be sure, but apparently the accolades have gone to the collective heads of the staff. I can't tell you how disappointed I am at the treatment that we received from the staff at the bakery on the 23rd of December. We called before leaving Baton Rouge, we wanted to pick up two king cakes for the holidays, and wanted to ensure that we wouldn't waste the trip. We were told that there would be no problem filling our order when we arrived, that holding any product was not necessary. When we arrived 90 minutes later, the cakes were gone. A simple nod at the empty shelves and an explanation that they are first come/first serve was all we were offered, despite having explained that we called before leaving to avoid this very possibility. We were told that "I don't know who told you that, but we don't hold cakes anyway... I can order you one for tomorrow." I can tell you that I'm not interested in spending 3 hours in the car tomorrow too so I can come back again for king cake. A phone call later when emotions were a little less a factor yielded no better a reply. Not One Person seemed interested in trying to make up for the miscommunication or disappointment or time wasted. It is so unfortunate that I now must be forced to reward bad service with my hard-earned money to enjoy the best king cake, or I must sacrifice and skip my favorite king cake. Thank you Haydel's for making sure you didn't lose sight of what got you to where...