Publix Bakery – Courtesy: Shutterstock – Image by Mahmoud Suhail
The grocery retailer Publix has apologized to an LGBTQ+ customer after an assistant at a Florida store declined to prepare a cake with the word “trans” written on it.
Yasmin Flasterstein is the director of Peer Support Space, which helps people in Central Florida who are dealing with mental illness, substance abuse issues, neurodivergence, disability, loss, trauma, or other barriers to their mental health. The organization focuses on underserved populations.
According to a Facebook post by Flasterstein, she and co-founder Dandelion Hill were looking for a cake to be baked for a Trans Joy Care Package event last month to show support for the community’s transgender members.
The couple asked the bakery at an Orlando-area Publix to create a brightly colored cake with icing that read, “Trans people deserve joy.”
However, the couple was told that their request couldn’t be fulfilled since the word ‘trans’ is deemed a political statement, and those aren’t allowed to be written on sweet delicacies under company policy.
“Publix let us know that they could not write our requested message,” Flasterstein wrote. “We spoke to multiple managers within the store, and they all said the same thing: ‘Corporate won’t let us write it because it’s taking a stance.’”
Bakery employees advised writing “people deserve joy,” leaving a space before the p, and supplying extra icing so customers could later write “trans” themselves.
“We very politely pleaded, literal tears in our eyes, to please write the message,” she said. “They refused.”
Flasterstein said The Washington Post that she spoke with a bakery manager and a store manager, both of whom insisted that adding political inscriptions to stance cakes was against corporate policy.
“A stance?!” Flasterstein wrote on Facebook. “That any community deserves joy is a stance? So let me get this right, it was okay to write ‘people deserve joy’ but not ‘trans people deserve joy.’
“It’s literally NOT controversial — we obviously deserve freedom, joy, and abundance —’neutrality’ is not neutrality here, there’s no riding the fence,” Hill said, according to the Post.
As others expressed their unhappiness in Flasterstein’s Facebook post, Publix’s corporate account apologized and promised to produce the cake they had asked.
“We are sorry that our associates did not handle your request appropriately,” the company said. “Please message us for more details, and we will gladly make the cake.”
Flasterstein received an additional apologies from the Publix public affairs department in a follow-up email, detailing the company’s policy for writing on cakes.
“Our policy indicates that our associates may write statements that are not copyrighted or trademarked, support a charitable cause, are factual, and considered to have a positive connotation,” Publix said in an email to Flasterstein. “As we indicated in our Facebook conversation, our associates should have fulfilled your request.”
Flasterstein is unhappy with the response and demands a public and transparent apology.
“We’d like to see more empathy for our transgender colleague who faced the brunt of this incident and broke down in sobs in front of other shoppers,” she told Publix. “Dandelion is owed a direct apology; our community is owed an apology.”
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Born and raised in South Florida, Krystal is a recent graduate from the University of Miami with professional writing experience at the collegiate and national news outlet levels. She’s a foodie who loves all things travel, the beach, & visiting new places throughout Florida.