On Friday afternoon I got word that a birthday was coming up... on the following Monday. Not only that, but the desired cake was going to be a chocolate-coffee cake for ~20 people. Cue a bunch of phone calls from someone outside of the Phoenix area trying to find a bakery that could handle it.
Bakery 1- Like you want one of those breakfast pastry things?
Bakery 2- Sorry, no way we can deliver on such short notice.
And Bakery 3 was A Bakeshop, who was awesome to work with. Described the general parametres of the order, and as a person who really has no experience with chocolate-coffee cakes they were quite helpful in taking most of the burden in figuring it out. Everything was going great until I told them that I would pick it up at 6pm on Monday.
Because they're closed Mondays.
But they assured me that we could work something out, and come Monday they were there to hand off the cake (even though I was 10 min late). It turned out to be delicious, was way more than needed, and was absolutely beautiful.