# Why are cakes in the grocery store so gawd damned expensive? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 13, 2014, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182 "2014-10-13T06:07:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 9:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182/41 "2014-10-14T09:58:45Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Where “total” doesn’t include the cost of your own time, wear on your oven and other implements, the fractional amortized cost of your house and vehicle, insurance, health care, utilities, wastage, taxes, etc… And don’t forget profit!😃 Profit is not a dirty word!😛 ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182/42 "2014-10-14T10:52:06Z")
No one has mentioned what type of cake we are discussing. We usually have some ordinary fruit cake on the go for afternoon munchies, but a birthday cake would be a Victoria Sponge. When I make one, I buy ready made icing (frosting) and we have a collection of decorations (Christmas and birthday) that get re-used. My wife’s speciality is chocolate sponge which is a basic sponge with added cocoa powder, a chocolate butter cream filling and a milk chocolate coating. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182/43 "2014-10-14T11:30:55Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > Restaurants are even more outrageous. $3.25 or even 3.75 for a slice of cake or pie. It’s like a bad joke. They get maybe 7 or 8 slices out of a cake? That’s a good profit. How much is a piece of cake supposed to cost? I’ve never heard of one that cheap and can’t imagine it going any lower… ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182/44 "2014-10-14T12:55:42Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > And don’t forget profit!😃 Profit is not a dirty word!😛 And what about all of the cakes that they don’t sell? Are they just supposed to eat that cost? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182/45 "2014-10-14T19:32:37Z")
> [@pkbites](#): > > The cakes I saw in the Pink-n-Shaved were single layer, rectangular cakes with chocolate frosting and some red goop that said “happy birthday” on them. They weren’t the works of art you and some others on this thread seem to think they were, and I’ve made that clear a couple of times. I wasn’t even in the market for a cake, I just happened to notice they were $29 and I shit. > > A box of cake mix, a can of frosting, and a tube of red goop would indeed make the same cake as the ones I saw, and the total price is about $5! The angry passion people have about cakes reminds me of a Jim gaffigan bit. I’ve seen cake mix and frosting go on sale for $1 each. Cake mix needs fifty cents worth of eggs, oil and water but still you can get two cans of frosting and two boxes of mix for five dollars on sale. And the store still makes a profit. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182/46 "2014-10-14T19:47:54Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > The angry passion people have about cakes reminds me of a Jim gaffigan bit. I’ve seen cake mix and frosting go on sale for $1 each. Cake mix needs fifty cents worth of eggs, oil and water but still you can get two cans of frosting and two boxes of mix for five dollars on sale. And the store still makes a profit. Or not. Items on sale are often loss leaders, especially if they’re about to expire soon or aren’t big sellers. And that still doesn’t take the cost of labor into account. ---
**Author:** ![Kimballkid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b5a626/32.png) [@Kimballkid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimballkid)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182/47 "2014-10-14T21:05:06Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > cake to your cakehole I don’t know why, but I literally LOL’d at this. ---
**Author:** ![Yookeroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yookeroo/32/323_2.png) [@Yookeroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yookeroo)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182/48 "2014-10-14T23:00:24Z")
> [@drachillix](#): > > IANA bakery manager, but the mother of my kids is. There are commercial bakeries who do a pretty brisk business selling full sheet unfrosted frozen cakes to grocery stores. The stores will then break those up into different sizes and frost and decorate them as needed. This is often why they demand 24 hours notice for a custom frosted cakes is sometimes they need a few hours to let the cake part thaw out. > > By doing it this way it also gives a level of consistency that would be difficult to match on a routine basis for the grocery store staff. The in shop bakery focuses on high speed fast turnaround high markup items like cookies, breads, rolls, donuts, bagels etc that will move quickly when they are sitting on the displays still warm. This is how it works around here. > [@pkbites](#): > > The cakes I saw in the Pink-n-Shaved were single layer, rectangular cakes with chocolate frosting and some red goop that said “happy birthday” on them. They weren’t the works of art you and some others on this thread seem to think they were, and I’ve made that clear a couple of times. I wasn’t even in the market for a cake, I just happened to notice they were $29 and I shit. How big of a rectangle? The most common size rectangular cake (1/4 sheet) will ba less than $20 around here (assuming no filling). ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182/49 "2014-10-14T23:24:47Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > And what’s with the pricing for produce? I can get a pack of 125 asparagus seeds for $2.99 and grow the plants myself. I mean, convenience costs money but that’s really out there! I know you were joking, but I’m constantly surprised at how \*cheap \*produce is, when I think of all the time, labor and gasoline went into bringing it to me. I mean, a pineapple…a single pineapple is grown from each pineapple plant. It takes 3-5 \*years \*for a pineapple to grow to maturity. For up to 5 years, someone has been tending, weeding, watering, keeping pests away… from my little pineapple. Then they pick it (by hand, I believe), put it in a crate made of wood (which someone had to cut down a tree for and make nails and put it all together) and carry it to the docks and load it on a boat (also built and run by people), which comes across the biggest ocean in the world, burning fuel for thousands of miles, until it’s moved to a train or a truck, or probably both in turn, driven by people who get paid an hourly wage to move it more thousands of miles and unload it at my local grocery store where yet another person drawing a wage unloads it and puts it in a bin…and I buy it for $2.99. $2.99. I mean, I get that it’s economies of scale, but…I can’t grok that kind of scale. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182/50 "2014-10-14T23:46:42Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > And don’t forget profit!😃 Profit is not a dirty word!😛 No doubt! My point was just that this isn’t $5 of stuff with $25 of profit. With all the other stuff, the bakery and store profits probably aren’t very high at all. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182/51 "2014-10-14T23:47:02Z")
> [@Yookeroo](#): > > How big of a rectangle? The most common size rectangular cake (1/4 sheet) will ba less than $20 around here (assuming no filling). Around here, a quarter sheet is usually around $20-$30, depending on the grocery store. Costco actually has some pretty good sheet cakes at the lower end of that range. $29 is a little high, but not eyebrow raising high if we are talking about those quarter sheet cakes. ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182/52 "2014-10-14T23:54:10Z")
> [@Yookeroo](#): > > How big of a rectangle? The most common size rectangular cake (1/4 sheet) will ba less than $20 around here (assuming no filling). I’m going to guess 18" wide by 15". Give or take on that. It’s just a guess. Some posters here either don’t know what I’m talking about or are full of it. Small grocery store [sheet cakes](https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRT9BAiobOHnXbrindYJZPuVPUxdbMsSySQJk_f4by8s5qcF4Jp), at least the ones I saw, are indeed made in bulk in factories by machines and low paid workers and there is no reason they should be $29! ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182/53 "2014-10-14T23:58:04Z")
I was leafing through a Town & Country magazine in a waiting room and there is a woman who makes a wedding cake for the 1%. She will deliver it (something like $500 per layer, boxed up) anywhere in the world (price including her and an assistant - to be put up in a hotel - to assemble and finish decorating the cake with handmade sugar ornaments.) Reading of the wretched excess the rich and famous are prone to, this seemed a little over the top, but SO worth it, SO brag-worthy. Makes me put that little single-layer red velvet grocery store cake priced at $15 in proper perspective. ---
**Author:** ![desertmonk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@desertmonk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/desertmonk)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182/54 "2014-10-14T23:59:38Z")
I’ve never made a cake in my life and have no interest in starting now, that’s why they charge what they do, cuz I won’t make as good of a cake the first time as they do. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2014, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182/55 "2014-10-15T00:13:36Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > The angry passion people have about cakes reminds me of a Jim gaffigan bit. I’ve seen cake mix and frosting go on sale for $1 each. Cake mix needs fifty cents worth of eggs, oil and water but still you can get two cans of frosting and two boxes of mix for five dollars on sale. And the store still makes a profit. > [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > Or not. Items on sale are often loss leaders, especially if they’re about to expire soon or aren’t big sellers. If an item in a grocery store is on sale, often times it’s because they got it on sale from their vendor. Not because they just decided to take a hit on Duncan Hines Devil’s Food Cake (assuming it’s just a random time of the year, not coinciding with there being a rush on that particular item). > [@WhyNot](#): > > I know you were joking, but I’m constantly surprised at how \*cheap \*produce is, when I think of all the time, labor and gasoline went into bringing it to me. I mean, a pineapple…a single pineapple is grown from each pineapple plant. It takes 3-5 \*years \*for a pineapple to grow to maturity. For up to 5 years, someone has been tending, weeding, watering, keeping pests away… from my little pineapple. Then they pick it (by hand, I believe), put it in a crate made of wood (which someone had to cut down a tree for and make nails and put it all together) and carry it to the docks and load it on a boat (also built and run by people), which comes across the biggest ocean in the world, burning fuel for thousands of miles, until it’s moved to a train or a truck, or probably both in turn, driven by people who get paid an hourly wage to move it more thousands of miles and unload it at my local grocery store where yet another person drawing a wage unloads it and puts it in a bin…and I buy it for $2.99. > > $2.99. > > I mean, I get that it’s economies of scale, but…I can’t grok that kind of scale. On top of all that, it likely hit some kind of refrigeration within an hour of being picked, stayed under refrigeration until it was delivered to within 50 miles of your store (which could take months) and, depending on the item, may have been gassed with ethelyne at the regional distributor. (This is my industry, I’m not just talking out of my ass here). > [@pkbites](#): > > I’m going to guess 18" wide by 15". Give or take on that. It’s just a guess. > > Some posters here either don’t know what I’m talking about or are full of it. Small grocery store [sheet cakes](https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRT9BAiobOHnXbrindYJZPuVPUxdbMsSySQJk_f4by8s5qcF4Jp), at least the ones I saw, are indeed made in bulk in factories by machines and low paid workers and there is no reason they should be $29! Pick N Save has a full bakery and tends to hire Culinary Arts students out of MATC. Do you know that that cake was a thaw and serve or are you just assuming that like you just assumed it was $5? Tomorrow when I get to work I’ll see if I can get a price on some cheap-o thaw and serve cakes from Sysco. I can’t think of my username/password off the top of my head and I’m not interested in locking myself out of my account right now by guessing at it. The “good” cheap ones would come from a different supplier (Lipari), but I’m not sure if I’ll have one of their flyers on hand. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2014, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182/56 "2014-10-15T00:43:30Z")
Okay, I just reset my password and logged in. Sysco sells a Chocolate Sheet Cake with Chocolate Butter Creme Icing that’s 12X16 for $47. Aaaand now that I see the brand is a high end one, I’ve had and sold that one, it’s really good, it could be used as a wedding cake. Let’s find a cheaper one. I’ve got another 12x16 frozen, uniced cake for about $16.46. I think that’s the cheapest one I can find. If we, for the sake of round numbers, say the frosting brings the cake up to $20, selling it for $30 gives the cake a very, very, very standard grocery markup of 33%. Deli/restaurant markup is 70%. To do the math in your head quickly, multiply the cost by three (or divide what YOU paid by three if you want to know what a restaurant (that doesn’t overcharge) paid for your meal). A little bit of of informed guessing (and a few seconds of Googling to check) tells me that the standard bakery make up is 50%. That’s in line with the numbers we’re seeing here. A $16 cake that I don’t have a price agreement with Sysco on, plus some frosting, double it and you get $30. If they made it from scratch, it might cost them $10, triple it and you’d have $30. So there’s some actual factual, real, not made up numbers. You want to get me ingredients for a 12x16 cake with butter cream frosting (enough to cover the cake, probably double what the recipe calls for), I’ll price that out for you. I’ll even base everything on LARGE quantities that a store like Pick N Save probably buys things in (50# of Sugar/Flour etc). It’ll probably need to be by (non-metric) weight. FTR, when calculating markups, they only count food cost, everything else is covered in the markup. And, as someone else said ‘profit is not a bad word’. Oh, and profit, is practically nothing. If that $20 in ‘profit’, $3 or so actually lands on the bottom line, not all $20. I remember years ago we were selling bags of Chestnuts for $75. Several people balked at the price and said [other store about 30 miles away] had them for 50. It was kind of a ‘what do you want us to do about it’ situation. One of the customers suggested we buy them from that store to which the owner said ‘if we bought them there for $50 we’d still have to sell them for $75. Why would I drive 60 miles (round trip) and sell them to you for the same thing I paid, if you want to pay $50, you go drive 60 miles’. Customers often don’t realize that A)We can’t sell things for what we pay for them B)We have to turn a profit C)We’re not doing this for fun and D)The owner needs to make money, more money than he would if he just went to work for someone else. Oh, and we have to keep the lights on and pay for all that other stuff, so if you do catch a glimpse of what we pay, do say things like 'you only paid $5.00 for this, I’ll give you $6.50. ---
**Author:** ![Manduck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manduck/32/256_2.png) [@Manduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manduck)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2014, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182/57 "2014-10-15T00:59:42Z")
> [@Pai325](#): > > A bakery cake, however, goes for at least $30 - $40, and for the deliciousness that is a bakery cake, I will pay it with a smile. Whenever I try that, they insist that I pay with money :mad: ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2014, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182/58 "2014-10-15T01:24:00Z")
> [@pkbites](#): > > I’m going to guess 18" wide by 15". Give or take on that. It’s just a guess. That’s probably a half sheet cake then (12"x18"). $29 is pretty cheap for one of those around here. That would be about $40-$45 at the local Jewel. As far as I know, they are indeed baked off-site and brought and resold at the Jewel. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2014, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182/59 "2014-10-15T01:54:00Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > Let’s find a cheaper one. > I’ve got another 12x16 frozen, uniced cake for about $16.46. I think that’s the cheapest one I can find. If we, for the sake of round numbers, say the frosting brings the cake up to $20, selling it for $30 gives the cake a very, very, very standard grocery markup of 33%. 😕 That looks like a markup of 50% to me. Cost is $20, marked up 50% to give a sale price of $30. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Nylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/77aa72/32.png) [@Mr.Nylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Nylock)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2014, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182/60 "2014-10-15T02:10:36Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > 😕 > > That looks like a markup of 50% to me. > > Cost is $20, marked up 50% to give a sale price of $30. I think he might mean 33 points. Or contribution margin. Or maybe he doesn’t know and he is swimming in a sea of self delusion about his pricing that will manifest itself into an existential crisis leading to a nervous breakdown. Or not. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-cakes-in-the-grocery-store-so-gawd-damned-expensive/701182.md?page=4)