Battle of the Bakeries: Cranky Al's vs Rocket Baby

For this post I will be analyzing the social media habits of two of my favorite local bakeries: Cranky Al's and Rocket Baby. They're so local they are basically across the street from each other, both bakeries are just off of 68th and North Avenue in Wauwatosa. Both are great places to get a cup of coffee or some delicious baked goods. But how do their online presences stack up?


First, we'll look at Cranky Al's Facebook presence. As expected their menu is available online. A quick look at their timeline showcases a variety of tempting looking baked goods posted numerous times per month:

This seems like a solid choice (especially with the solid force that bacon is on the internet these days), but if you scroll through the feed you'll not only find their food, but instances where they've helped raise funds for local schools as well as the occasional food meme. All of these seem like great choices for their fans to like and pass on to their own social circles.


Rocket Baby also keeps their menu available online on Facebook. Looking through their feed one can also find the occasional meme, but Rocket Baby also lists tasting events held at the store, job postings, and, of course, a showcase for things that look really good to eat:

While you can find many of the same pictures from Cranky Al's Facebook feed on their Twitter feed as well, Twitter shows its versatility for keeping up with your own community via Cranky Al's feed. A quick browsing of the feed shows many opportunities where Cranky Al's retweet the posts of their happy customers:

Rocket Baby on the other hand has significantly less interaction with their customers. All the food pictures from their Facebook feed are there, but retweets from customers like the ones in the following pictures are few and far between:

Both companies follow the strategy that showing off their food is the best way to connect with their customers, and given that they're both bakeries, it seems to be a sound one. However Cranky Al's seems to go out of their way to connect with their customers a bit more on Twitter (or Cranky Al's customers just happen to consist of people who like to tweet a bit more). Both companies also have very close numbers of followers on both Facebook and Twitter. By keeping up with putting their best foods forward it's no wonder that these two competitors can continue to find success in such close proximity. But if I had to give one of them the online edge it would be Cranky Al's, as it took maybe 10 seconds to find a picture of something with bacon on it. And unless it's up against pictures of cats, bacon pretty much guarantees winning the internet.