David Glass of Bloomfield, CT makes some of the most awesome desserts I have ever tasted.  His signature dessert, the Ultimate Chocolate Truffle Cake is one of the most intense, purest expressions of chocolate I have ever tasted.  His cheesecakes are heaven and come in a wide variety of tastes and flavors and my favorite, the Ultimate Luscious Italian Almond Cake (pictured above) may just be my favorite cake in the world.

I’ve been to many free tastings at the factory and I’ve always come away with at least one sweet something for the fridge or freezer, so I found it very interesting when I found an email in my inbox (7,500 other people’s inboxes, too) from David himself as an appeal for us to consider lending Desserts By David Glass some money.  The catch?  Interest would be paid in something way better than money: cakes.

The idea seems novel, but is not really all that new.  As an Urban Studies major at the University of Connecticut, I’ve come to learn about how cities and neighborhoods develop and nurture business.  It is not uncommon for enclaves to form, especially in areas densely settled by immigrants or unique cultural groups and many times social institutions will form within these enclaves which can help provide capital for business outside of the formal banking and lending system.

Of course, Desserts By David Glass is not located in an urban enclave, or really even a neighborhood.  It’s in a light industrial area which straddles the Bloomfield-Windsor line.  The effort here is really a fascinating old idea done in a thoroughly modern way.  Instead of reaching out to the members of the nearby community, David Glass has reached out to a different, non-geographical community, his email list.

This may be the perfect audience for such a plea.  Those who have received the email may not live in the same town, or even in the same state, but they’ve already shown interest in the company by being on the mailing list to begin with.  In addition, the offer to repay interest not with money, but with cakes illustrates how highly targeted technology has allowed this audience to be.  In other words, bankers and loan officers might not be all that interested in gourmet cakes.  If you are on David Glass’s mailing list, it’s probable getting lots of cakes to eat sounds like a fine idea.

If you have landed on this page from anywhere like Serious Eats or Foodbuzz you already realize how much technology can change the way we eat.  I would argue that eating and enjoying food is such a fundamental thing, it is also a perfect microcosm and reflection for how technology can also change how we make and procure food, and even how we conduct business and live in general.