Extending the hours and days of holiday sales, bulking up displays, spotlighting gourmet pies, adding mini-cakes, store-made fudge and truffles, and initiating chainwide demos.

They're all a part of retailers' efforts to make the most of the busy holiday season that's getting under way.

While Thanksgiving pushes sales up for a little over a week, November is not the big sales time for bakery. It starts in December, some retailers said.

“After they've bought their pies and buns for Thanksgiving dinner, that's about it. October is bigger than November, but the last three weeks of December are the really big ones,” said Steve Beaird, manager of the central bakery facility at eight-unit Kowalski's Markets, St. Paul, Minn.

“Our bakery sales for those weeks in December easily go up 40% to 50% over any other three-week period in the year.”

Kowalski's has expanded its holiday offerings a little this year. Most notable is a line of six-inch mini-cakes dubbed Celebration Cakes in four varieties: turtle, raspberry mousse, hazelnut mocha and apricot nectar.

“I know they'll sell, because people want smaller cakes, and these are special, elegant-looking cakes. They're big enough to feed six to eight people,” Beaird said.

“I don't see the great big holiday parties happening anymore. They're more intimate kinds of gatherings with fewer people.”

Beaird added, though, that the new varieties are available, on order, in 8-inch and l0-inch, and quarter-sheet and half-sheet cakes.

At Marketplace Food & Drug in Minot, N.D., cake department manager Nyla Stromberg said she, too, sees a tendency for people to buy smaller cakes.

“Small, tiered cakes are doing very well for us, and we figure they will do particularly well during the holidays,” Stromberg said.

“Even for bigger parties, they'll buy a two-tier, 6 and 10 inches, and then a sheet cake [in the same variety], too. They want something that looks nice and classy, but why spend $3.50 a serving for the whole big crowd when you can have most of the servings [cut from the sheet] for about 50 cents?”

Even as they serve guests from the sheet cakes, party hosts can have the finely crafted, tiered cakes on the table, catching attention.

“They look very elegant. We use a lot of fondant and white chocolate for draping. That takes glitter and pearl dust very well,” Stromberg told SN.

Down South at Piggly Wiggly Carolina Co., Charleston, S.C., mini versions of elegant cakes and single servings are gaining in popularity, too, said Rita Postell, the 115-unit chain's spokeswoman.

“I think there are a lot of retirees in the area. They don't want to deal with a big cake. Gatherings are apt to be small, too,” Postell added.

APPLE APPLICATIONS

At Marketplace Food & Drug, Stromberg is always, all year, looking to differentiate her department from other ISBs in a pretty competitive marketplace. This holiday season, one new item is a take-off on another holiday's popular item, caramel-dipped apples.

“We sold a ton of caramel apples this year during Halloween week. Now, we're going to be dipping apples in melted, white butter cream icing. Then, we'll dust them with edible glitter.”

The dipped and dusted apples, looking like a ball you'd hang on a Christmas tree, will be packaged individually in stiff cellophane bags, tied at the top with a red, green or gold ribbon.

“I think they'll be nice for the holidays,” Stromberg said. She's already planning on making trays with four of the apples standing on their heads at each corner of the tray, four individually wrapped stacks of cookies in different varieties in the middle, and six holiday cupcakes surrounding them.

She'll probably make room, too, for some blocks of fudge. The bakery sold a lot of its store-made chocolate fudge and walnut fudge last year — in fact, lots more than Stromberg had imagined, she said.

So this year, she has added varieties, including pecan, peanut and chocolate swirl. Turned out in loaves, it'll be easy to sell by the pound.

Related Articles

Holiday Baking Classes Fill Up ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Zingerman's Bake House has filled up a roster of classes that show people how to bake holiday treats....