Sugarlips Cakery — Restaurant in Mesa

I have used this bakery several times, including my wedding desserts and have spent thousands of dollars without any issues/concerns. I wish I had the same experience during this exchange.

I placed an order for my son’s 1st birthday cake with initial conversations starting on the phone on 7/20 with a completion date of 7/27. I sent over inspo pictures her on the 7/20 after our phone conversation and did not hear back from her until 7/22 at 3:55pm with a contact stating I had until 5:00pm to sign and pay. I called Sam to discuss the design on the contract as I had a few question about the design. She stated on the phone that she “needed me to pick what I wanted” and then she would send me a new contract to sign before 5pm. We reviewed my order and I confirmed with her that she still had the $137.00 credit on the account from a previous order. She confirmed that yes, the credit was still there. Once I received the new contract, I signed it immediately and sent it back to her. With the $137 credit on the account, and no mention of needing to pay when we spoke on the phone, I thought we were squared away. Apparently not. I got an email on 7/24 at 10:37am stating that because I did “not get the signed contract over and did not pay (mind you, there is $137 on the account) before 5pm (which I did and she claims I did not) they could not make my cake the way we discussed and that I had until 12pm that day to sign and pay for something less. No phone call, just an email. I have a full time job within a hospital system so responding to my personal email within an hour and a half during a work day is unachievable for me, and likely anybody with a job. I called Sam at 12:07pm to touch base and express my confusion and was met with a shocking amount of attitude and complete unwillingness to communicate through the issue. She literally started yelling. Literally yelling. Saying I was “unwilling to take any accountability” and she “didn’t know what I don’t understand about reading a contract and how there is confusion” and that the contract I signed for the cake is “no longer valid because it didn’t get signed till after 5” and that “she needed to start making the cake last night.” I told her that with the $137 on the account I must have misunderstood because her contract wasn’t clear to me that I owed additional money. She stated again “I don’t know how you can be confused.” I handle high value contracts daily as a profession so I am confident I understand how to read them. I stated that clearly we would not be coming to a resolution and I’d like the $137 credit back as I would not be using her services in the future and she told me “No, it’s store credit and that it says that in the contract.” I responded with “you mean the contract that you said is no longer valid?” To which she couldn’t respond.

Unfortunately for Sam, I draft and execute contracts for a living and after careful review, she is in breach of contract and has no signed documentation stating that she would not reimburse us for the $137.00 she feels she can keep.

I have already spoken with the BBB and look forward to their assistance in a resolution.

I also found another bakery that is incredibly kind and professional to make the same cake for almost half the cost. The new bakery also noted that Sam beginning the baking of the cake 4 days prior to my event is not a high quality approach for both cleanliness and taste.

The level of unprofessionalism and theft displayed by Sam the “owner” is something I’ve never experienced before. Stay clear of this place for any special occasions as Sam is clearly unfit to manage a business. I’d highly recommend she seeks professional assistance for her explosive behavior as her level of anger and escalation was unnecessary for the conversation. As a professional, I’d be quite literally embarrassed if I behaved so immaturely and treated a costumer that poorly, especially a repeat customer. A little collaboration and communication would have...

We chose Sugarlips for our wedding cake as they were listed as the preferred vendor for Garden Tuscana, the reception hall we had booked. I actually had another bakery in mind for our wedding and the cake was going to cost well over $1000. But through the preferred vendor package pricing at Garden Tuscana, I believe it ended up being $350 for a 4 tier cake, which was a no brainer! At first I thought to myself “I’ve never heard of this place.” But after one quick Yelp search, my mouth was watering. I was excited to try it out!

We booked a cake tasting prior to our wedding. They are very coordinated and had us input our preferred cake and fillings in advance of the meeting. The day of our meeting, they even had a private little seating nook and a welcome sign for us. It was really sweet (no pun intended). They gave us three half cupcakes (which are pretty big!) all topped with vanilla buttercream and the three mousses of our choice. I was also able to discuss vision with our consultant. Luckily, I had one picture I showed her which was pretty simple. Four layers in an ivory color and then the florist would really do all the rest. I’m very happy we did the cake tasting because some of them were ones we thought we’d like and then chose not go go with them and replace them with other flavors. They even gave us additional samples because we were so fickle. And beyond that, they had flavors on the menu that weren’t in stock the day we came, so my fiancé ordered them special and picked them up the following week so we could taste test them. Fortunately, our tasting was 3.5 months before the wedding which gave us a lot of time to choose.

Part of the reason it was so tough to narrow it all down was because we had 4 tiers plus a sheet cake! We were allowed to choose a separate flavor for each one. Knowing that we were going to take the top tier home, we opted to keep that flavor the same as the base flavor. We ended up with Marble Cake with Chocolate Mousse, Pink Champagne Cake with Coconut Mousse, Banana Cake with Strawberry Preserve, and Confetti Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. It was delicious and I’m very happy we went with the multi-flavor options for our guests.

We received many compliments on the cake and some even shared that it was the best wedding cake they’ve ever had! One of my friends still tells me about it and said she even went back to Ohio and told everyone how amazing our wedding cake was. Hah! I’m SO happy we went with Sugarlips and honestly, they have much better cake than the original bakery I was going to select for our wedding. I know it’s pretty far out of the way, but next time I need a specialty cake, you can be sure I’ll head over to Mesa to...

If I could give zero Stars I would . Normally I would have given them five stars plus because myself and my family have used them many times without any issue. The cakes are beautiful. They've always tasted good. So when I was contacted by a good friend on Saturday afternoon that they wanted me to order a cake for a birthday for this upcoming Saturday, I jumped at the chance to contact them again. They're closed on Sunday and Monday so I called on Tuesday to place the order for a Saturday pickup. Normally that's never been an issue before this time it was made very clear to me that they just don't have the time or the staff to handle any type of orders unless you give them 7 to 10 business days. Duly noted Anyhow, after a lot of back and forth with the person on the phone, they agreed to give me a basic naked cake. They weren't even going to decorate it. They were going to write happy birthday on it and maybe if they had time to throw a few flowers on it with what she said to me on the phone and because of all of this they were also going to charge me a rush fee which I agreed to and then she said I'm going to send you over the contract and by tomorrow morning you need to have that contract signed and you need to pay us which I agreed to I then called Wednesday morning as soon as they opened. Tried to explain that my printer at home had died but I would be back in my physical office the following day and would be happy to sign that contract but I was ready to pay for that cake so that there was no delay I was told that they could not even accept payment without my initials being on this contract and then I was made to feel stupid for not knowing how to use my phone to sign a contract Moving forward sugar lips cakery please remember that all of your clients are not all in their twenties. Not all of us grew up with cell phones Anyhow, the conversation did not go well and I admit I got very frustrated and told them that if it wasn't corrected that they could go F themselves. Yes, clearly not professional on my end but I was just fit to be tied after a day and a half of their rudeness and unprofessionalism, especially when the cake was going to cost me $210 for a birthday cake. When I finally figured out how to sign the contract I sent it back to her to which I got an email back. That said because I told their staff that they could F off that they were not going to honor it Completely fine by me by then. I had already found another bakery that was more than willing and able to assist me for a simple birthday cake order for a Saturday pickup Good luck in the future sugar lips. Perhaps moving forward you learn what customer service...