Welsh baker aims to be top of cake pops
An award-winning Welsh bakery is aiming to be top of the cake pops with customers across the UK with its new products
Clam’s Cakes, based in Crickhowell, has launched two chocolate cake pops which are going down a storm with sweet toothed customers in coffee shops and other retail outlets.
Cake pops are the hot new thing in baking in the UK, having been a hit in America for many years. A ball of cake is dipped in chocolate, individually decorated and is eaten like a lollipop.
Clam’s Cakes has so far developed two varieties – dark chocolate cake decorated with Smarties and white chocolate cake decorated with Hundreds and Thousands – but recognises the great potential for making cake pops for special events and occasions.
Sales director Lewis Phillips ventured into cake pops after seeing them on an American stand at London Coffee Festival earlier year. It took him two months to perfect the manufacturing process but the investment has proved well worthwhile.
Trials at Coffee Barker and Coffee Mania in Cardiff, Urban Coffee in Birmingham and outlets in Bristol and Hereford have convinced Lewis that he’s onto a winner. The cake pops can also be ordered online at http://www.clamscakes.co.uk.
“We are one of the first bakeries in the UK to make cake pops for the food service sector and the response to the taste trials has been fantastic,” he said. “We plan to supply them to our existing customers across the UK and are confident they will open up new markets for our growing business.
“If they take off in the same way that cup cakes did, then they are going to be huge in the grab and go market in the UK. Based on our production of 1,000 loaf cakes a week, we could be making 15,000 cake pops a week, which will create new jobs within the company.”
The cake pops, which have a two-week shelf life, are recommended to retail at £1.50 each.
The family business, which employs 20 staff, has seen sales double in each of the last five years. Clam’s Cakes supplies a wide range of delicious handmade cakes for food service companies, coffee shops, sandwich shops, food halls, delicatessens and farm shops as well as having its own online shop.
“Our unique selling point is that we make high quality cakes by hand in small batches with no additives or preservatives,” said Lewis. “We still use recipes that have been passed down by generations of my family and developed for today’s market.”
To help its continued growth, the company has received marketing advice from the Wales the True Taste Mentoring programme supported by the Welsh Government and delivered by Menter a Busnes.
