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The story
A thread on 5ch’s “Live News G” board took off over a photo of a handwritten message plate on a Chateraise cake. It started with posts pointing out the sloppy handwriting, then commenters shared that the message plate is actually a paid add-on costing 70 yen per cake — though it’s free if you buy a decorated cake worth 1,500 yen or more. Others noted that Chateraise stores don’t keep a dedicated pastry chef on-site, and that most of the cakes themselves are frozen, factory-made goods. This set off a clash between those defending the chain (“that’s what you get for the price”) and those arguing that once you charge for a service, you should maintain a baseline level of quality.
Guess the “pastry chefs” in Chateraise’s kitchen
just aren’t great at handwriting?
Source: chateraise.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
You get what you pay for.
If they charged for it, that's not okay.
Apparently it's a paid service.
No idea if they're all like this, but here you go.
70 yen?
Is the actual labor billed separately or something?
Normally you'd just crack up and move on.
It's a service that costs a few hundred yen at most.
Seriously, lol
A few hundred yen? Don't lowball it.
Standard price is 75 yen.
And it's free if you buy a decorated cake worth 1,500 yen or more.
You'd think they'd have some kind of food printer for this by now, no?
It's only a few hundred yen, right?
You'd normally just laugh it off.
Makes for a good memory, even.
and apparently writing with a chocolate pen is genuinely hard.
Probably a part-timer doing the writing there too.
What do you even think Chateraise is?
but you can't really complain about a third-rate cake shop.
Because he's skipping his own Hikomaro act (Hikomaro = a TV personality famous for over-the-top food-tasting catchphrases) and just talking to himself under sock-puppet IDs.
A pricier shop would probably write it properly, no?
There's no image here where they actually got a name wrong.
Sounds like you think "koki" is somebody's fancy-sounding name (古希/koki just means the 70th-birthday milestone, not a name).
Who's this "Mr. Koki" supposed to be?
Don't expect miracles for 70 yen.
But cut that down to zero, and nobody ever gets good.
Just being near a skilled person raises the odds you'll grow skilled yourself too.
That's been known forever —
even dogs and horses have trainers for a reason.
Same goes for cram-school teachers and private tutors.
Even training an AI doesn't work unless you feed it top-tier examples to learn from.
So if you're surrounded by people who are good at handwriting (or drawing), does everyone around them just get good too?
Not everyone, sure,
but if there's someone to model yourself after or get advice from, some people really do grow from that.
Plenty of hit manga artists started out as assistants to famous ones — it's a common path.
It's more natural to assume people like that would've figured it out on their own anyway.
Why are people complaining about a non-professional staffer writing on a slice cake?
They'll write on it if you pay, though.
Juchheim won't do it unless you arrange it in advance.
They turn you down if you ask same-day.
Nobody's talking about Juchheim here.
Background and Key Points of the Debate
Chateraise is a nationwide, budget-friendly confectionery chain where most products are frozen goods mass-produced in factories, and stores don’t keep a dedicated pastry chef on-site. Having someone handwrite a message on a cake is actually a paid add-on costing 70 yen per plate, though it becomes free if you buy a decorated cake priced at 1,500 yen or more. Given this price point and staffing setup, the thread split between those arguing “this is a price-appropriate service, and it’s unreasonable to expect high quality in the first place” and others insisting that “if you’re going to charge for a service, you should at least maintain a basic standard of quality.” Some posts also compared this to pricier chains that handle handwritten messages through advance reservations, suggesting the difference comes down to how each chain is run. A handful of posts also mocked consumers based on price point or customer base, but those have been excluded from this writeup.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (“Live News G”) thread “[Image, Sad News] Chateraise Sparks Massive Backlash.”
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