KING CAKES RULE DURING CARNIVAL

MINA WILLIAMS

NEW ORLEANS (FNS) -- No food items top the list of must-haves higher than the king cake during the Carnival season here. In recent years, supermarkets and retail bakery outlets have enjoyed increased sales and added flavors to offer customers variety and selection.

Rouses, a Thibodaux, La.-based retailer, expects to sell more than 75,000 king cakes this year, significantly more than the typical 50,000 sold, the company's bakery and deli director told SN. The retailer is seeing the greatest increase in the New Orleans market, where new stores have opened.

Rouses offers more than 30 fillings ranging from cream cheese to pineapple to peanut butter and jelly. Top sellers are the chain's pecan praline and strawberry cream cheese. "The varieties are limitless," said Billy Bishop, bakery and deli director.

The braided, sweet, yeast-dough specialty, laced with cinnamon, is often filled with a fruit or cream filling. The cake is baked in a circle, symbolizing the route the Three Wise Men took, and has hidden inside a small plastic baby, symbolizing Baby Jesus. King cakes are glazed with white icing and are additionally topped with colored sugar.

For safety's sake, the plastic baby is offered to customers in a separate plastic bag for them to insert. Tradition dictates that the individual finding the hidden piece is said to have good luck for the year, is crowned king for a day, and is expected to host the next year's king cake party.

To achieve those phenomenal sales, the retailer goes all out with special merchandising and advertising efforts. During SN's visit to several of the company's units, large displays of king cakes were on tables greeting customers at the front of the stores.

"We build displays to resemble Mardi Gras floats," Bishop said. "More than 80% of stores do that."

Prepackaged king cakes, sold in bags and boxes, are offered in a variety of flavors ranging from apple and blueberry to heavenly hash and pina colada. They come in three sizes -- small filled cakes retail for $5.99, medium for $9.99 and large filled cakes $15.49. While unfilled cakes are available, about 75% of cakes sold have fillings, Bishop said.