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Cupcake consumption up 52% but supermarkets miss out
Latest figures suggest that supermarkets are failing to satisfy the booming demand for cupcakes, with consumers instead turning to craft bakers, specialist cake makers, foodservice outlets and home baking.
Total cupcake consumption occasions (in home/carried out/out-of-home), excluding homemade, reached 44 million, up 11% year-on-year (Kantar Worldpanel, 52 w/e Feb 2011); this rises to 65 million occasions if you include home-baked cupcakes, up 52%.
However, supermarket sales data shows pack volumes declined 5.4% (52 w/e 15 May 2011). A spokesperson for market analysts Kantar said: "The [retail] data tracks products bought in shops and eaten ‘in the home', but does not pick up those that are consumed out of the home. The cupcakes market is in rude health and our usage panel data - which tracks consumption both inside and outside the home including shop-bought and made at home - shows that cupcakes were in growth.
"However, it is the homemade and premium own-label brands that are performing well, while the standard cupcakes, such as those aimed at children, which make up over 50% of the market, are not performing well."
Andrew Williams, deputy editor of British Baker magazine, said the figures showed that cupcakes are providing a platform for creative cake makers to take on the multiple retailers, and win.
"Every year there is talk of 'the new cupcake' coming along, but no product has yet lived up to the hype," he said.
"These figures show that there's still a massive, growing demand for cupcakes. It's craft bakeries, coffee shops and independent cake decorators that are behind the growth - data shows they are by far outperforming the supermarkets, which struggle to match them on skill and creativity.
"The dynamism of the cake-making sector is being propelled by an army of emerging professional cake bakers and start-up businesses, fuelled by the boom in home baking, and that's what National Cupcake Week celebrates."
