Pearl's Bake Shoppe — Restaurant in Richmond

I have been a loyal customer for over 8 years. After my experience Sunday. This will be my last time coming here!

I preordered a custom cake and the communication was good. Sunday when I arrived to pick up the cake, the cashier had a very flat affect, she sat the cake down and immediately began to give me instructions on how to handle the cake without ever asking me was everything in order with the cake. It was not. I let her know it was missing an exclamation mark. She took the cake to the back and I began to look at the candles on display while I waited. When I turned around she had returned and the cake decorator was standing behind her visibly irritated and rolled her eyes as she walked away. My first thought, it was literally one minor detail. Secondly, I paid almost $200 for a personalized cake, you aren’t doing me a favor by providing the service I paid for.

If that wasn’t bad enough, when the cashier began to close the box up I noticed it had ink smudges covering a corner of it. She looked at me and said “oh it’s from my hand” I asked her to replace the box and she starting huffing and puffing. So let me understand, you have ink on your hands and it transfers to my cake box and you’re irritated that I’m asking to replace the box.

When she came back I noted that there was no label on the box, I asked her if she could print out an ingredients label. She asked if someone had food allergies. To which, I explained that the venue where I am hosting my event requires a clearly labeled cake for liability reasons. She walked away and came back and said No I can’t give you a label.

I can’t believe a professional licensed bakery could not provide an ingredients label!

I further explained that it didn’t have to be a specific recipe since I know some things are proprietary. I’m not asking for your secret recipe, I just need to be compliant. She left again to ask a young lady who was sitting in an office behind the register whom I could clearly see. I saw her irritation and body language. I waited for a few minutes and that person walked up to the register with a printed sheet of plain paper with five boxes seemingly from a excel spreadsheet that said in short eggs, butter, flour and sugar. She damn near threw the paper at me the way she handed it to me with aggressiveness. I said thank you, she didn’t respond. She just walked away.

The cake: very mediocre. Overly sweet, thick and dry.

Pearls. I am disappointed. My customer service experience was 0 stars and the 2 stars is for the cake itself.

I have sent so many customers your way in my years of patronizing this establishment. Your workers are uncaring and unprofessional and don’t represent the Pearls I...

Wedding parties, hear this tale and heed my warning: Pearl's is not what it used to be, and not worth the headache. Stay away!

I've been using Pearl's for special events (and the occasional "treat yourself" moment) for years, so Pearl's was the ONLY cake vendor we had in mind for our wedding. Even though we now live out-of-state and scheduling a tasting involves a long drive, we stayed committed!

I scheduled a curbside tasting order for the next time I could do the 6hr drive to VA, February 12, 2021. There was a freezing rain storm in VA that day, and the shop opened late. I called to verify they'd be open and my tasting would be ready: "Yep, come by at 3." Arrived at my scheduled time, waited outside 20min in the freezing rain, and was asked to come back in an hour 😐 Fine.

Called a few days later, still in February, excited to start my wedding cake order! Someone took down my info and a couple of very basic details and told me their wedding person would be in touch with me shortly. A week goes by and no word. I fill out the online form, crickets. Couple more days, I call again and leave a VM. One month from my initial "let's get started" call, I fill out the online form again, on March 18.

NOT UNTIL MARCH 24 DO I HEAR BACK FROM PEARL'S --at all!--over a month after I started asking them to be my vendor. Was I in a state of perpetual madness from then until now? I guess cake, wedding planning, and a pandemic combined can have pretty f*ed up effects on the brain, because I decided to keep pursuing. All they said is "we're available for your date, we'll be in touch." I was thrilled to have a response at all.

April 1 (now 1.5 months out from my first contact with them), they email some details about my request, but don't respond to all of my questions. I'm still gonna roll with it, because again, I am hyped to just be hearing from them.

April 21 (now 2 full months from my first contact), I receive my emailed contract from Pearl's! ONLY two months to create a contract for a single flavor, single tier, ~40 serving "naked style" cake. Gee whiz! But wait, what's this? There are two fairly significant details on the contract that are wrong, that were instantly noticed and I immediately asked to be correctly...

...but that was 3 weeks ago, and with less than six months until my wedding, their failure to fix two simple details on this contract has been the straw to break the camel's back--and that's on top of a pretty heaping pile of straws.

I've shot myself in the foot waiting on Pearl's to get their act together, but this doesn't have to be you. Spare yourself the trouble and go elsewhere,...

So I called Pearl's Cupcakes to have a gender reveal cake made for our gender reveal party. When I called I had the representative look up the picture of the design on the cake that I wanted. She looked it up and explained that they could do the design and she would check to see on if they could have it ready by the date I needed it. She came back on the phone and said they could have it done by then so I went ahead with the order. I also got them to dye the inside of the cake so once you cut into it you find out what the gender of the baby is. When asking how big the cake needed to be she explained what sizes would feed the number of people I had coming. We decided on a 9" cake that would feed between 20-25 people. The next day I missed a call and saw it was from them so I called them back. The designer called to tell me that the saying that goes on top of the cake would cover up most of the design and asked if it could be placed on the front of the cake. After hearing this I was very disappointed considering the picture I showed them was just fine with plenty of room to still see the design. That when the lady explained that they were doing a round cake! I had no clue of this and thought that it was going to be the same as in the picture I showed them. When I explained this to them the only answer I received was that she explained it very well that it was a round cake. Well if that was the case I would have said NO and had them change it to the right one I wanted. So now I have the wrong cake with the design and words not even done right. Then when I asked to have another cake made how I wanted she said they didn't have enough time to do another one! I paid 72 dollars to have it done! Then when I asked to speak with the manager she wouldn't come to the phone and the only thing the cashier would do is say she could get her manager to call me back! What a joke! Havent heard from the manager or anyone else! Terrible...