Want a different way to celebrate occasions during Covid? Just eat cake

The people of Salford have found different ways to celebrate by eating celebration cakes at home instead.

The Salford GK gallery and Tea Room reveal that they have noticed that people love to buy cake on their break from work, and ever since they have started to make celebration cakes customers have carried on giving “really positive feedback,” says Helen Kirby, who runs this family business alongside her daughter.

She adds: “Nicer people are taking time out to message us and come in to say thank you”. The GK Gallery and Tea Room is a family run business lead by a mother and daughter duo which specialises in Gluten free and Vegan cakes.

Daughter, Gina Kirby quotes: “People still want to treat themselves to a nice cake for their birthday but obviously because people have not been able to celebrate with anyone, they’ve been ordering the mini ones from us which has been really nice.

“Even if it’s you and your boyfriend at home, you can still have a nice cake. Even if you can’t see any of your family, you can still have a nice cake.”

Helen adds: “That’s something we found during lockdown and continuing, people do like to eat cake and they consider that as their little go-to treat.

“We have a lot of people working from home and they’ll come in and say ‘oh I have just given myself a break from working in my flat, so I am just going to treat myself to a slice of cake’ so we are seeing that as a regular occurrence.”

A UK sustainability charity named Hubbub concluded, from a customer poll, that more than half (57%) have admitted to value food more now than before the pandemic.

When responding to whether making celebration cakes is more exciting than normal cakes, Gina answered: “I feel like I can have my artistic side come out, being an artist myself.

“It’s like an art piece for me, I can design it from scratch.”

Gina adds: “Normally just baking these recipes, you don’t get to be too creative whereas what I love about the celebration cakes is that I get my creativity side out as well.”

Helen reveals that the whole idea for the art gallery and baking was her daughter Gina’s.

Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, the art gallery that situates above the ground floor over the Tea Room will still remain temporarily closed. However, although they have considered taking exhibitions online, for now they hope to reopen whenever government guidelines allow them to do so.

They are both hopeful for their art gallery to reopen but for now are focusing on the baking. Although the art is not on the menu, the celebration cakes and normal cakes definitely are.

“It’s been tough. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a further lockdown so even if we had to close as being a take away that’s just one of them things, but nothings going to stop us baking” says Helen.

“We had a full itinerary of exhibitions that we had planned for this year, but that has just been rescheduled for next year.

“To be honest, with COVID, it’s turned our life up side down, so much that, our priorities had to be getting the nuts and bolts of the business going, which is the bakery. The bakery is really the engine for this place,” she adds.