TAKING THE CAKE 2004-05-17 (1)

LYNNE MILLER

Never mind research that shows consumers are skipping dessert these days. Tried-and-true everyday cakes are perennial favorites -- and steady movers in supermarket bakeries, retailers told SN.

Bakery associates at the Hannibal Village Market IGA, a 20,000-square-foot supermarket in Hannibal, N.Y., see increasing demand for sugar-free cakes. In fact, sales of conventional and sugar-free angel food cake are just about 50/50, bakery department manager Debbie Davis told SN.

"It's surprising," Davis said. "The last time we put them on the front table, the sugar-free [cakes] almost outsold the regular ones. I'm sure there are more than just diabetics that grab them."

Associates make the angel food cakes from a mix, and sell the popular 10-ounce round desserts throughout the year. In January, the store runs a sale on the cakes to appeal to shoppers seeking lighter fare, Davis said. When strawberries are in season in the spring and summer, the store cross merchandises angel food cake with containers of berries. Packaged in black, bakeable pans with plastic lids, the cakes stay fresh and stack easily. The plain, unfrosted angel food cake is the No. 1 seller in the category, Davis said. The store also carries cakes frosted with butter cream whipped topping, drizzled with chocolate or topped with coconut.

Not so long ago, the store "couldn't give away a pound cake," Davis said. Just in the last year, though, demand for the rich, buttery cake picked up. The store outsources pound cakes, in plain and marble varieties. Creme cakes, made from a mix, are offered in several varieties, too.

"It's just a wonderful mix," Davis said. "It's so moist. Quality fillings make a difference, too."

Spring and fall are the best seasons for selling cake, she said. Pound cake and angel food cake are popular in the spring. During the winter, single-layer cakes with various candy or cookie toppings are featured on weekends, stacked on a dessert cake table.

Displaying the cakes in multiple locations around the store boosts sales. In addition to the bakery, cakes are featured on a square table at the front of the store, and on another table in the frozen foods aisle on the other side of the store.

"The table in the front is the best place to sell cakes," Davis said. "We sell more cakes at the front table than in the bakery."

At the Festival Foods unit in DePere, Wis., the large cake case in the bakery is a popular attraction. Inside that case, a top-selling item year round is the eight-inch round single-layer cake, available in many familiar flavors. Associates refer to the everyday cakes as tortes.

When cut, the cake offers five to eight servings, which seems to be the optimal size for many local consumers, said Jessica Gilligan, a cake decorator at the 72,000-square-foot DePere store, one of nine stores in the Onalaska, Wis.-based Festival Foods chain.

"We have a lot of older people," Gilligan said, noting the store's elderly customers, who tend to have small households, like single-serve and small cakes. "They don't want something to stay in the house for [more than] a couple of days."

All of the stores in the chain have their own bakeries, where the cakes are made. There are 18 torte flavors, which are rotated periodically. Early this year, the stores promoted the tortes by advertising a different flavor every week. Normally the cakes retail for $7.99, but are $1 less during sales. The promotion was successful, and stores plan to repeat it, said Gilligan.

A summer version of tortes, strawberry cakes are white cakes iced with whipped topping and decorated with strawberries. The cakes have enough of a following that the store will display them on a table near the front door, Gilligan said.

Festival also carries angel food cake, frosted with whipped icing and sprayed with bright colors. The cakes are so popular that associates receive many requests for them from customers, Gilligan said.

"They go very very well year round," she said.

The everyday cake business varies greatly from region to region, and store to store. Over the last decade, cake eating across the board has declined, according to the NPD Group, Port Washington, N.Y. Over the next two weeks, 19% of Americans will have ready-to-eat cake, 8% will have cake made from a mix, and 5% will enjoy a slice of old-fashioned, made-from-scratch cake, the NPD Group's data showed. Compare those numbers to 10 years ago, when 21% of consumers enjoyed ready-to-eat cake over a two-week period, 11% had cake made from a mix, and 7% consumed homemade cake.

"It's part of the bigger issue of dessert," said Harry Balzer, author of "Eating Patterns in America," and vice president of the NPD Group. "The average size of a meal eaten at home has been moving down. The products that get hurt are side dishes and desserts."

The aging population could help bakeries. As a rule, older consumers indulge their sweet tooth more frequently than younger people, Balzer said.

"The older you get, the more likely you are to eat dessert," he said. "But dessert eating by this generation will be less than their parents' generation."

Retailers view cakes as the workhorses of the bakery. Indeed, 35% of bakery retailers said cakes were responsible for the biggest growth over the past two years, according to the International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Association's "Battle of the Brands: Winning the War in the Mind of the Consumer" report. Furthermore, 27% of those surveyed think cakes will be responsible for the biggest growth over the next two years.

Close to 60% of consumers said they purchased everyday cakes, such as pound and angel food cakes, according to the findings of another IDDBA survey, "Consumers in the Bakery: Who, What, When, Where and Why They Buy and How to Get Them to Buy More." Of those who said they bought the cakes, nearly a quarter identified in-store bakeries as their usual place to purchase the items.

Diet and health concerns are inspiring new products. With adult onset diabetes on the rise, industry observers believe demand for sugar-free cakes will grow.

"I think it is reasonable to think that sugar-free items will be increasing in sales," said Alan Hiebert, a member of IDDBA's education department. "New non-sugar sweeteners also have the potential to make sugar-free bakery products' taste and texture much better."

Smaller products and items designed for individual servings could gain in popularity as the population of retirees and empty-nesters grows, Hiebert stated. "I see demand for smaller portions continuing to rise."