I think you misunderstood. The first paragraph was generally agreeing with you. The second wasn’t directed to you but the thread or, more specifically, the OP.
It must be a transatlantic thing. My local supermarket sells loads of it. I buy this sometimes: http://www.tesco.com/groceries/product/details/?id=254947026
Yeah, in the US, fruitcake is generally looked upon with a combination of great suspicion and revulsion. (See the headline for this Wall Street Journal article, for example). I’m not entirely sure why, as I enjoy the stuff.
Btw it takes two boxes of mix to make a half-sheet cake. One box will make either two circular layers or one 9x13. So cost is as follows: 2 boxes of mix ($5.60), plus the 6 eggs ($1.99 for a doz) and 2/3 cup oil ($2.62 for 1qt) you need, plus two cans of frosting ($4.56 ) and the icing for writing words ($3.44). (All prices from wal-Mart)
So it kind of seems like, not counting your time, it costs more than $18 to make a frosted half sheet from mix. Add in an hour of your time at $10/ hr (and to do a proper job, letting the cake fully cool before frosting, leveling the top, etc. takes longer than that) and it’s obviously a fair deal.
As a person who cooks and bakes in a household of people that can’t cook or bake, the answer is - if you don’t like it make it yourself. Oh you can’t/won’t? Then this is the price. Yes I make cakes from scratch for family.
But think of company potlucks. How expensive really is it to make some cookies or a pumpkin pie or even cupcakes or brownies from a mix?! And yet people that insist that they need to be first to sign up for the dessert list invariably bring in something bought from the store. So my theory is supply and demand and nowadays there is always a high demand for store-bought desserts of any kind.
Waitaminute though, that’s counting the price of the whole dozen eggs of which you only need six, and the whole quart of oil of which you only need 2/3 cup, and a whole tube of lettering icing of which you only need part, and so on. Isn’t it? It’s not like you can’t use the leftover ingredients for some other purpose, so you shouldn’t count the whole cost of them towards your cake.
Mind you, I’m in the camp that thinks grocery store cakes aren’t particularly overpriced (though I don’t know about the quality because I bake cakes from scratch), but I think you may be underestimating the difference between the cost of ingredients and the retail price of the cake.
Yep, people will pay a lot for convenience. I cook from scratch most my meals, 5 days a week. But once in awhile I just need something to bring to a dinner party, I didn’t have time to make it, so I’ll go grab that pasta salad that costs $0.50 to make and sells for $4 or that cake or pie or whatever. And plenty of people plain just don’t like cooking or baking and, apparently, they’re willing to pay $29 for a 12"x15" cake that serves about 25-30 people.
Sheet cakes are a clever cost saver. Pour batter into the pan, bake, and smear on the frosting. They are only frosting the top. Serve from the pan. Heck the cover is integrated into the pan too.
I make them for office parties because they are so simple and convenient.
I can recall the work my grandmother put into a three layer carrot cake. Three pans to fill. Frosting is required between the 2nd and 3rd layers. Toothpicks to keep the layers straight. Then frost the sides and top. It quadruples the work compared to a sheetcake. Carrying a layer cake requires a special cake container and good luck driving anywhere with it in the car.
It was the OP who claimed you could make a cake from mix for $5, which is plainly not true.
And it’s true you only use half the eggs, etc, but, if you start from zero that’s what you have to pay, and if you make cakes infrequently, you’ll end up paying the full cost every time, because the eggs and oil will spoil/go rancid, and the icing will harden and be useless.
It’s the cost if going from “I have no cake” to “now I have cake” for the average schmuck with not much skill or knowledge. The kind of person who makes a choice between mix and store-bought cake. As you observe, frequent bakers don’t usually use mix.
Someone who can’t come up with something else to do with 6 eggs in 2 months deserves to throw that money down the drain.
I’m not sure what your point is. If you’ve never wasted a $1 worth of food I salute you. The question posed was, why are sheet cakes expensive compared to mix? The answer is, they are surprisingly economical when you consider the real costs for someone with no experience or interest in cake baking.
In fact, it’s cake mixes and prepared frosting that barely make sense from a pure cost analysis. They’re hardly better than premade, cost nearly as much, and create a fuss and bother.
It would be cheaper if you made the cake from flour instead of boxed cake mix. On the other hand, you’re ignoring the cost of the cake pan, mixing bowl, mixer and whatever other utensils and tools you need. Perhaps you already have them, but many people do not. As noted, store-bought cakes represent a convenience.
I make a couple of dishes that require diced onions. I can, of course, do this myself from whole onions, but I’m just not skilled enough to make decent dices. (And there’s the occasional blood spatter due to carelessness with a knife.) The supermarket sells five ounces of diced onion for about two bucks, or another market sells three pounds of diced onion for four bucks. Yes, that’s expensive compared to whole onions, but the dices are the same size and then brown evenly. So sometimes, I buy pre-diced onion.
Some of you are daffy.
My OP is talking about a big chain grocery store, not some little bakery shop.
The cakes in the local grocery store are made in a factory on an assembly line using low paid workers. The goop lettering is put on by a machine. The ingredients is mixed in huge vats and such. My wifes friend worked at a local bakery factory for 2 decades and said it only cost about 60 cents to make those cakes. Everything is purchased in huge bulk.
I don’t know about where you are, but the local Costco here use premade frozen cakes and decorate as needed. The amusement park I used to work at on several occasions received cakes still a bit frozen in the center when cut into.
A lot of grocery stores have bakeries in them – the one I go to does, and the head baker there is an old family friend. She used to make my birthday cakes when I was a kid. (And yes, the bakery cakes there are made by hand – they’re NOT machine made). And yes, this is a local chain. (Giant Eagle, for those of you who live in Western PA. Their cakes are pretty damned good)
Yes. So what? It doesn’t matter. What matters is how much someone will pay for the convenience. You yourself can’t make a cake for 60 cents, so it doesn’t matter what their cost is. (And I doubt it’s as low as 60 cents, unless all you’re counting is ingredient cost, and even them I’m a little skeptical.) How much does the Coke you get from the soda fountain cost vs. what the actual price is? How much does movie theatre popcorn cost vs the actual cost? Bottled water? Flowers? Cakes don’t even scratch the surface of crazy-ass markups in the retail market.
I don’t know if they do or don’t, but they taste damned good for grocery store cakes. If I want a cake I know I’ll enjoy and not want to spend the two to three times I’d spend at my favorite bakery, it’s Costco for me.
Maybe. But I’d say it’s pretty rare for a grocery chain to be baking their own cakes. Decorating? Yes. But not baking them.
And add in the loss from all the cakes these bakeries end up throwing out (or donating).
This question was included in the OP.
What did your wife’s friend do? Were they the company accountant? If not, they don’t have a clue. If so, they were almost certainly talking about the marginal cost of making one cake, and not the real cost of making a cake after attributing all overhead.