Birthday cakes in restaurants

[OneAquaGoose]

When I was growing up, I never knew anyone to take their own birthday cake to cut and eat at a restaurant. So when I first saw people do this, I was really surprised. My group of friends all do this and it makes me really uncomfortable. I feel so rude and cringe whenever they do it. “No we don’t want to order a dessert to give you money. We want to use your plates, knife and table instead for free.”

YABU - I do this
YANBU - It is rude

I find it so awkward and my group of friends always do it too. I don't understand why restaurants allow it. They don't even order a coffee instead !!

God what a miserable opinion, I think it's lovely, they have clearly paid for a meal and drinks so why on earth not.

If the restaurant allows it, I don't see the problem. They will make their money by adults buying main meals, not everyone will always order dessert anyway.

If I’m planning to do this , I’ve always phoned the restaurant /pub first to ask their permission , and offer to bring paper plates and cutlery .
Never been refused yet, and only one venue has said yes please bring plates etc .

If the restaurants didn't like it, they wouldn't allow it, surely?

They could always start providing birthday cakes on their menu (with some advance notice, of course)!

Where I work we don't bring the cake out until we have taken a dessert order. Half the group aren't usually aware of the cake and nobody wants to spoil the suprise and tell them all not to order one. Once dessert is bought out we will bring out the cake. We bring a knife and napkins, nothing else.

Some people are incredibly rude and demanding about the cakes, and we've had complaints if some of the candles don't last the journey to the table, complaints not enough staff came to sing etc.

It's ridiculous. The treat is surely the meal with loved ones, not paid staff making a fuss of you.

They don't like it, but fear you will take your whole group elsewhere makes them say yes.

So it's still beneficial for them to take the booking and get the customers' business then?

You manipulated the voting.

YABU although I’ve never done it.

If the restaurant is happy then I don’t understand why you are not.

Restaurants encourage it because they know people celebrating will drink more. If it was actually bad for business, they wouldn't.

Some restaurants charge ‘cakeage’.

I’ve never done it because my family members would rather die than have anyone look at them/sing to them/ know we are celebrating.

Absolutely. I wish they would provide them

Me too, and I would absolutely pay for that - I don't mind paying for desserts at all, I just want the birthday pageantry, cutting one large cake and singing etc. I've paid cakeage charges too, happily.

Lots of places do now charge “cakeage” to serve your own cake. A friend wanted birthday drinks in a function room at a pub (no food options available, just crisps etc from behind the bar) and was quoted £10 a head.

Not sure why they even risk it. They are liable for all food served on their premises and need to have full traceability for food brought in. If it's got cream on it and it's been left out for hours or some handled it with an infectious disease or sneezed on it or had a Staph infection when preparing it etc etc then they could end up with a serious problem. That's before the commercial considerations. Just say no, our food safety system doesn't permit it. Unlikely to get a cancellation just on the cake alone.

From a servers pov….
Ask if it’s ok when booking and if you’re bringing it ahead of time we have limited storage space and sometimes have 3 or 4 cakes a night
Some places charge a fee for bringing a cake (for the extra work of plates etc) so check ahead of time.
Don't expect staff to sing if your mates don’t join in (this has happened)
Cut up the cake and dish it out yourself
Don’t spray glitter everywhere it gets in other people’s food and is ridiculous to clean up.
Please leave us some leftover cake :)

Tacky and embarrassing. I would never do it - just awful.

It’s fine if you have bought at least 2 courses plus drinks, as long as the restaurant allows.

I have never seen this or heard of anyone doing it, but YANBU and I am astounded any restaurant lets this happen.

Friends and I don’t do cake in restaurants now after I was the “victim” of being told not to order one of the delicious sounding desserts from the menu because they’d bought a birthday cake from sainsburys. The cake was lovely and I really appreciated it but I definitely mentioned a year later that I would prefer the chance to sample the restaurant’s offerings!

We do that if the pub is ok with it which most are. Most of us don’t eat puddings anyway but sone still wil get puddings - it’s the ceremony that makes it not the cake.

I always ask at least a week in advance, buy the cake from the restaurant if they offer this, bring a cake if they don’t and can’t organize a suitable dessert with candles, pay any charge they impose and give them a piece of cake for their freezer for food testing purposes. So I feel OK about doing it. Is there any chance one of your friends is organising this and you just aren’t aware?

Yes, because if somewhere else will allow the cake you'll lose the booking. But obviously no one LIKES it. A table ordering all the food from the restaurant is clearly preferable.

As an employee, who makes no rules, and simply does what she's told - I'd just prefer customers would remember we are doing a favour, and not be such dicks about the cake. You don't get to demand a crowd of workers stop everything to come sing, you don't get to demand the exact moment the cake appears etc.

One memorable time we bought out one of those very small sponge cakes (not a birthday cake, the kind that you get in supermarkets that are round and quite basic?) and the woman complained that we didn't jazz it up with cream and fruit as she knew we had both available. She had asked for this and been advised there would be a charge. She had declined to pay the charge and then slagged us off in a review for providing a plain and dull birthday cake...that she had purchased herself!

Well yes, she was an arse, I'm not suggesting it's ok to be an arse about it 🤣

My point is that it's up to the restaurant what they will allow. I'm sure there are lots of things they'd prefer - they'd prefer you to order lobster rather than pizza margherita - but I can't see how it's unreasonable for a customer to bring a cake to a restaurant who has allowed them to do so, however begrudgingly!

PIL used to do this. One drink each, one main course (usually a 241) and a Morrisons birthday cake. Mortifying.
When FIL died it came to light their estate was worth over £1 million.