Cakes Often are center stage in some of life's biggest celebrations, such as weddings and birthdays, so it is not surprising that the category seems to be weathering the current economy. In Modern Baking's 2008 Supermarket Bakery Survey, custom-decorated cakes were the highest contributor to in-store bakery sales, accounting for 11.3 percent of sales, tying with crusty/hearth breads and rolls. When combining all subcategories-custom-decorated, all-occasion, wedding and upscale dessert-cakes contribute more than 27 percent to in-store bakery sales.

This is in line with the Perishables Group's FreshFacts® data from the 52 weeks ending Oct. 31, 2009. Its cake category includes wedding, decorated, dessert, ice cream, mousse, crème or pudding and snack cakes; cupcakes; cheesecakes; individual desserts; tortes and specialty dessert cakes, and accounts for 28.5 percent of in-store bakery sales. According to the Perishables Group, the category grew 2.7 percent when compared to the previous year. That is not to say that changes in what customers purchase have not occurred.

Tammy Kampsula, business director of bakery for United Super-markets, Lubbock, Texas, discusses the trends she has seen in the 50-unit chain's market. Cakes account for about 30 percent of the chain's bakery sales, its largest contributing category.

What are you seeing in the cake category?

Traditional birthday cakes and sheet cakes continue to hold strong. Where we're seeing a bigger change is in the dessert/specialty cake category. Customers still want to indulge, but they aren't necessarily buying a large specialty cake. We're selling single layer or smaller sizes of specialty cakes as well as smaller desserts. I think part of that is driven by the economy and the retail price of the cakes. Also driving the trend is people becoming more health conscious; they still want to indulge, and the smaller size provides that. If a customer purchased a large cake, it may stay on their counter for a few days.

When the economy recovers, will the smaller sizes remain popular?

I think the smaller sizes will still hold their own, but we'll also see some movement back up to the larger sizes as people have bigger parties and spend their money on that type of dessert item.

With the smaller sizes' lower price point, what has United done to continue to grow sales?

We have a 5-in. critter cake line, and we've had tremendous success with that. In fact, we recently had a Critter Day event. We created a whole Saturday event around the critter cake. It included a cakewalk-basically musical chairs-and it was intended for children, but everyone participated. We gave a cake away every hour, and during the peak times, we gave away a cake every 30 minutes. In addition, we sold quite a few cakes. We've been selling between 800 and 1,000 of the critter cakes per week; the line has been a huge success. The retail is $5.99, so it's a low enough price point that customers can take one home for their children, or grandparents can buy it for their grandchildren. Those are all incremental sales-we're growing the cake category.

How else has United boosted cake sales?

The key is to keep the varieties and the selection alive and refreshed so we are growing the category. We change our cakes on a quarterly basis. Not the entire line, but we bring varieties in and out to tempt the customer to buy. That's what's really helping to move those sales along.

How has the cake category evolved in the last five years?

You really have to look at it at two different levels. The birthday and celebration cakes continue to grow. The birthday category is evolutionary; our goal is to provide our customers with a memorable, positive cake experience for their child's birthday so they continue to buy a cake each year from us. And that flows over into purchases in other cake categories.

Where is the cake category headed?

Five years ago, we were selling larger sized cakes and that has evolved to smaller sizes for portion control. Total units are up, but we have a little self-imposed deflation with the lower retails. Still, it's about getting more units in the basket and more repeat sales.