bakingbuyer - November 2011 - 24

DESIGN OF THE TIMES

Inspired by Flavor
Cupcakes took flight in the retail bakery community more than five years ago, and now face a fork in the road. Competition for cupcake sales is fierce. Supermarkets continue to post double-digit annual sales increases, and convenience stores like 125-unit KwikShop now sell single-serve Just Desserts cupcakes at the checkout registers. Retail bakery owners agree the one factor threatening to interrupt the cupcake’s unprecedented climb of recent years is overexposure. Too many cupcakes – especially if they are not served fresh – can threaten to take the wind out of the category’s impressive sales. So retail bakeries are busy tinkering with flavor profiles, making sure to match the type of flavors that their diverse customers will demand. In some cases, retailers are fusing flavors from traditional French or even Hispanic desserts into new cupcake variations that excite the palate. With deep roots in Cuban traditions, Porto’s Bakery in Southern California is now breaking the mold of what a traditional bakery offers. Selling for $1.50 apiece, cupcakes are offered in many flavors: Parisian chocolate, red velvet, strawberry, and specialty cupcakes like bubblegum, chocolate truffle, pumpkin, and café latte. Porto’s offers many of the same flavors in mini versions for 95 cents apiece. Porto’s Bakery & Café serves thousands of customers and em24 · BAKING BUYER · NOVEMBER 11

ploys hundreds of team members in Southern California, with a store in Glendale, a store in Burbank, and a third in the city of Downey. Attention to detail is crucial to Porto’s success. Every piece of chocolate, for example, is Belgian chocolate. Betty Porto, who is vice president of community relations, shares the story of how her brother Raul and vice president of operations Tony Salazar once traveled thousands of miles during a European trip to see one bakery in a small town in Belgium just to taste the chocolate produced by this renowned shop. Likewise, Susan and Jose Moreno opened Moreno Bakery in Brandon, an eastern suburb of Tampa, in May 2008 when there were no bakeries to compete with at the time. The Morenos had recognized that the people of Brandon were hungry for a place like this, given that many would drive 20 miles to buy their favorite Cuban bread and guava turnovers from bakeries in Tampa.

The Bagel Bakery & Cupcake Shoppe offers sweet and savory cupcakes.

“We brought in things that people would traditionally buy in Tampa,” Susan says. “We also offered other traditional baking favorites to make us a complete bakery.” The bakery menu is filled with examples of blends and fusions of flavors. Examples include Dulce de Leche cupcakes, raisin babka, and guava gooey butter cake (a St. Louis tradition minus the guava). Guava is such a popular ingredient in Florida that Moreno Bakery adds guava swirls to 3-inch round cheesecakes. Instead of selling cheesecakes by the slice, they make individual cheesecakes in three flavors: guava, chocolate chip, and cherry topped. The bakery even makes a cannoli cupcake topped with one chocolate-covered cannoli on top of a yellow cupcake iced with vanilla buttercream. Beverage flavors are another relative newcomer to the world of

bakingbuyer - November 2011

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