The first Fruitcakes baked this year–January, 2012–are now available for sale on line, by mail or phone from the Bakery. The first batch of some 650 cakes have had time for the fermentation to begin, the hallmark of a traditional fruitcake.
The new fruitcakes will be stocked in the Abbey’s Shop for Easter. In the meantime, you may order them on-line, by mail or over the phone through Monastery Bakery.
Floretta Machen says
November 30, 2014 at 1:44 pmGreetings,
I used to order fruitcake every year but moved away and lost your ordering address. Where can I order? I don’t see online ordering. They were the BEST fruitcakes ever!
Blessings,
Floretta Machen
James says
November 30, 2014 at 7:14 pmThank you for the compliment about our fruitcakes but you’re correct: they are not available on-line. They are only on sale from the gift shop.
I realize that people are accustomed to shopping on-line but may not have the experience of selling on line, which requires processing orders, printing labels, labeling boxes, double checking the accuracy of what’s been labeled, preparing a UPS manifest or carting the product to the post office for addresses that UPS cannot handle.
Selling from the gift shop is a one-step process. Our reduced personnel, reduced by ageing (think of lifting all those boxes) and personnel, is a big factor in not selling fruitcakes on-line this year.
Another factor is the cost; the on-line sales involved too many man hours. Fruit cake baking is labor intensive and one wishes to recoup some profit for all the work; the profit margin, as we had been conducting business has been too insignificant to make it worthwhile. Selling from the gift shop is a better strategy for supporting ourselves.
A third factor is our monastic vocation. If we end up too over-extended, spending too much time on work and finding ourselves too fatigued; if work is overcoming prayer, what vocation are we living? We bake fruitcake to support our monastic life; we do not come to the monastery to produce and ship fruitcakes.
I’d suggest contacting Guadalupe Abbey in Layfayette, Oregon or Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky about ordering fruitcakes; both have been producing fine fruitcakes for over half a century.