MADISON, Wis. -- The International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Association has selected three of the supermarket industry's top cake decorators to compete against each other on-site at its Dairy-Deli-Bake 2001 seminar and expo this year in Minneapolis.
The finalists chosen to participate in IDDBA's sixth annual Cake Decorating Challenge at the Minneapolis event, June 3 to 5, are Linda Flindt, Fuller Market Place, Chehalis, Wash.; Jeffrey Forster, Harp's Food Stores, Springdale, Ark.; and Eileen Grady, Publix Super Markets, Lakeland, Fla.
Flindt is associated with a Fuller unit in Centralia, Wash., and Forster with a Fayetteville, Ark., Harp's store. Grady is a bakery associate at a Publix unit in Jensen Beach, Fla.
Chosen from 40 entrants from supermarket companies across the country, the three will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Minneapolis where they will compete during exhibit hours on the show floor at IDDBA's Dairy-Deli-Bake 2001.
This is the fifth consecutive year that a decorator from Publix Super Markets has been chosen to compete in the finals at the IDDBA show. Fuller Market Place and Harp's Food Stores, too, have been represented in the Cake Decorating Challenge finals in previous years.
"Companies have continued to enter more people in the challenge year after year, and to me, that says we're doing it right. Publix, and even some of the smaller companies that don't have a lot of people, enter decorators every year. That means their previous finalists have gone back and talked it up. They must have said what a great experience it is, and that's exciting," said Carol Christison, IDDBA's executive director.
Christison said selecting the finalists gets more and more difficult because the caliber of all the entrants is so good.
"You'd think it would get easier for us to choose, but it doesn't. The level of professionalism is so high. It makes it difficult to choose the three best from among them."
In the first phase of the contest, entrants submitted color photos of their work to IDDBA earlier this year. Via the photographs, contestants are judged on attention to detail, neatness, creativity and the diversity of their work.
"They're submitting more photographs now, which is great. In the beginning, when we first started the contest, we'd get maybe four or five photos from each contestant. Now, we're getting whole albums and portfolios and that's what we want. We need that in order to see the breadth and consistency of their skills. This year, we had a total of 1,322 photos submitted."
Many retailers, like Publix, for example, hold in-store and intra-division contests to select the best of the best and then enter the cream of the crop in IDDBA's challenge.
"By having the contests within the company, they see it not only as a way to promote decorated cakes to their customers but also to promote professionalism to their employees," Christison said.
The three-day IDDBA Cake Decorating Challenge will begin June 3 on the show floor where the decorators will be set up at tables side by side. Show attendees are encouraged to watch them at work. The contestants must decorate enough cakes to fill an 8-foot tiered display and then set the case. They're also required to decorate a wedding cake and a theme cake. Then, on the last day, they can let their creativity run wild with a "contestant's choice" cake.
A panel of industry experts will judge their work at the IDDBA show and then will choose a winner and second- and third-place runners-up.
Last year, the first place winner was Helen Benefiel, Dillon Food Stores, Hutchinson, Kan.; Debbie Kavanagh, Publix Super Markets, placed second; and Dianne Days, Fuller Market Place, came in third.
