Slowing Economy not affecting Desserts

It appears that while consumers may be cutting back on lattes, they aren't doing the same for their favorite desserts

By Angus Loten
Inc.com
updated 12:52 p.m. PT, Sun., July. 13, 2008

Not long ago, Tracey Hughes had an enviable career as an executive marketer at Colgate-Palmolive in Chicago and New York. Then she started bringing homemade rum cakes to corporate functions. In no time, Hughes, a former fashion model, was taking special holiday orders from friends and colleagues, eventually baking up to 10 cakes a night in her small Brooklyn apartment. That's when she decided to go into the dessert business full-time.

"I grew up in the kitchen, watching and learning," says Hughes, who launched the Rum Cake Fairy Company in October 2005, armed with a handwritten book of her grandma's secret recipes and her own marketing savvy. It paid off. Two years ago, her rum cake was discovered by Oprah Winfrey and featured on the coveted "O List" of must-have holiday goodies. Since then, she's launched an entire range of cakes sold at high-end retailers.

And at a time when many businesses owners are easing spending plans to cope with the sputtering economy, Hughes and her business partner, Patricia Kolaras, are closing a deal to buyout the New Jersey bakery that mass produces her cakes.

The American sweet tooth
In good times and bad, Hughes and other successful dessert entrepreneurs can count on the American sweet tooth to help keep their businesses afloat. A recent survey of some 1,500 U.S. consumers by Techmonic, a Chicago-based foodservice research firm, did not find a single person who regularly skipped dessert. More than half said they indulged in such perennial favorites as chocolate chip cookies, vanilla ice cream, and apple pie at least once a week, though typically more often than that. That kind of appetite is driving a $23 billion domestic industry of bakeries, chocolatiers, ice cream makers and countless other small businesses.

"Clearly, consumers love dessert," says Darren Tristano, Techmonic's executive vice president of information services. By keeping an eye on shifting consumer trends, he says, restaurant, café, and foodservice owners can leverage the appeal of desserts to boost incremental sales, and in turn help dessert makers grow their companies.

(From MSNBC.com - see entire article at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25561551/)