Tonight's show was probably the most boring and uninspiring of all so far.

Is it because it was a cake task, or is it the team of youngsters themselves to blame?

I said on another thread that I've seen more talent in my local market place which is the Glasgow Barras, than what I've seen in tonight's show.

So either the tasks need to change, or the youngsters need a boot up the bum to get this show going....especially after tonight's poor episode.

These guys as a team can't sell for toffee.

It's possible that most have little experience of direct customer selling. Zoe works on a market stall and it shows.

Agreed the cupcake task seems a step back from the task before but it isn't really. Task one - experience selling to the public. Task two - design a product that could sell. Task three - design a product, understand production issues and sell to public directly with instant feedback. The tasks build up skills and importantly involve making them mesh together. And that is what the candidates on JA or TA have to try and deal with. Whereas we see the results edited for comedy value.

'Cupcake' didn't contain any moments of total stupidity so I suppose it seemed boring. We were spoilt with 'Pantsman' that took a true one off to bring about. The JA lot seem far more adult by comparison.

I think if you come from a Sales and Marketing background, then you might pretty easily see the flaws in these kids techniques....or indeed the adults techniques.

However, the fact that this show is aimed at the GBP as a whole, and where it's most unlikely that your average viewer has the first scooby about sales, then what I said in my opening post probably rings true to them.

Your average Joe public will make comparisons with their local market sellers and think that they are streets beyond what they are seeing on the telly.

So if this show is all about selling, then the public need to at least see it in a way that they can rationalise it with and even compare it with what they've already seen.

The genius of these kids should be what's different to that, but also exceptional at it in the first place, if the GBP are to be kept glued to this program.

Well a market stall is only one area of business. My experience is that while some market sellers (fruit n veg) are pro-active and have decades of experience, some just sit there. The finer points of advertising, production, customer service etc are not areas you'd associate with your local market.

I'm not denigrating market sellers btw. I left school at 16 to work 5 years in a shop. Direct experience of how to talk to customers is priceless and undervalued. Should be the foundation of any career in business. For better or worse, Sugar is seeing they get a taste of it, if nothingelse.

Sugar by his own admission tells us all that everything that he lays stake on lay on that market experience.

And whilst you are right that the percentage of market sellers may be high that is what they do for the rest of their chosen life (because they love it or lived in to it), I still believe in his essence of it breeding a rough diamond. And this we see time after time and with no other academic experience whatsoever.

Indeed we even see it where academic experience meets market place and a hunger to sell a unique market.

Albeit, what I feel LA is looking for is a merger of both the market place savvy streetwise versus their academic ability and to put that to the test and bloody go out there and sell it.

At least that's what the show once was and why the public gripped it.

Perhaps it's lost that.

The task was about more than selling, it was about ordering correct quantities, devising a workable production system & costings. The programme does seem obsessed with the selling aspect though. As well as being better at that though, both teams could have increased their profit by selecting the cheapest toppings and choosing simpler designs that they could execute quickly & neatly, as well as offering a smaller range of options. They could have pre-prepared more cakes and just added finishing touches. Keep it simple & efficient. I'd be impressed if they spent more time discussing such things. It may be the editing that made this task come across as a bit dull but they could have got a lot more out of it - and nobody could really say that they didn't know the product.

I'd have been interested to know how much more profit they would have made had they stuck to Arjun's original 250 cake estimate. You can't predict accurately with a calculator alone but he seemed to have a firm grasp on the reality of what was achievable.

Before the programme started I thought the cup-cake task would be boring, but it turned out to be quite a challenge.

I am amazed that anyone would pay £2-3 for a little cupcake for starters. Always thought of them as beginners' cakes.

The show has to be visual and with the opportunity for comedy. Selling is the one area that has to include outside people.

It's also what every commercial business has to do. Even if you are not in sales yourself it benefits a company if you understand that what you are doing is still for the benefit of a customer somewhere. I've worked with General Motors and many there were totally oblivious of the idea of costs. Only one manager showed any desire to increase revenue with an opportunity. None of his collegues got the point. He unlike them had started out in retail (Burtons)

The show's history is the those who come from an academic background tend not to be all rounders. It's often attitude as they have a career to fall back on so don't push themselves out of their comfort zone.

That Sugar doesn't like lawyers is rubbish, he's given loads of money to them over the years

Yes, I think Zoe made a mistake compromising over the quantity of cakes to be bought. Could have been worse, though; if they'd bought 800 cakes like Emma wanted they'd have made a considerable loss, and might even have lost the task.

I'd been thinking in terms of the problems in their production process being the main problem for Zoe's team, but overstocking on cakes was a considerable factor too. They were very lucky that Rhys' team performed so poorly.

If you're making a sizable profit on the raw materials, it makes sense to err slightly on ordering plenty in case you run out and lose sales. I think Arjun and Emma did make an attempt to work out production timing as a guide to a realistic order. Adam kinda put a spanner in that. Not charging extra for the extra personalising work was a big mistake and threw the plans out further.

They may have hired that costume and that cost come out of the budget for cake.

I'm sure they would have done. Their outlay was just under £350, and their profit something like £120. 800 cakes would have been more than double the number they ordered, and they would have spent around £750-800.


I don't think you can blame that on Adam. Yes, he was very, very slow, but Emma's estimate of 1 cake per person every 40 seconds for 4 hours was completely unrealistic. I'll wager that not even the professionals could do that.