The Great British Cake Survey - 2021
Did you look in a mirror this morning?
There you were. Staring back. Perhaps a little tidier (or more run down) than usual, but you were altogether yourself.
Now imagine you’d never looked in a mirror. Ever. Didn’t even know what colour your eyes were, or whether your cheeks were rosy, or your crinkles many or few. Your image of yourself was built on hearsay and your own limited experience.
Well, until June 28th 2021, that was the state of the UK custom decorated cake industry.
We’d never seen ourselves from an objective vantage point.
There was no tangible record of what we, custom cakers, look like.
Who are custom cake makers? Where do we come from? How many cakes do we make? How much does a cake maker typically earn? How much do we spend?…no-one really knew and there’s a reason.
Our industry is not organised or steered by professional associations, trade unions or government. Instead, it’s made up of a myriad of micro-businesses and hobbyists. Beautifully distinct and colourful pixels that go to making the full picture. However, that fragmentation makes us a particularly difficult group to get a good understanding of.
Why does that matter? Knowing who we are, and how our cake world operates, really matters. Because accurate data means better understanding. That leads to better services, support, and products for custom cake makers.
Better is better
It was this search for reliable data to help the world of cake that was the inspiration behind The Cake Professionals launching The Great British Cake Survey. We wanted to capture and detail the contours of our poorly understood slice of the bakery world, and to equip the industry with knowledge that could a genuine difference to life and work.
The Great British Cake Survey is the first ever UK-wide survey of the custom cake world. It was run in partnership with Falmouth University. Their involvement was crucial in bringing real academic rigour to the process and also to act as an independent advisor.
The survey was open for two weeks and closed on June 28th 2021. The response was phenomenal. Falmouth University had hoped for a response of 400 completed surveys as that would enable statistically reliable results.
In total, 2,824 people responded to the survey!
We are so incredibly grateful to everyone who made that happen.
58% of the respondents were hobby cake makers and the remaining 42% were part-time or full-time cake business. In response to the questions, over 302,168 distinct data points were gathered. We were beyond happy to be able to capture so many cakers in the family picture! (It also meant a whole lot more work to sift through all the responses!)
The detailed analysis of the results can be found in the full 2021 report which covers over 40 questions from the survey. The report breaks out responses into 7 different demographic groups. The full survey is available to purchase here.
To whet your appetite here are some top-level titbits.
Overall Demographics
When it comes to baking it seems that it’s women who take the cake.
Our personal assumption going into the survey was that there would be a 90/10 female to male split. This was loosely based on our own network, and the attendance ratios at The Cake Professionals annual conference. The reality is a markedly more female dominated industry with 94% of respondents being women.
Even in professional kitchens the area of baking and pastry is typically where women are found. The genderisation of food is a subject for another survey, but it’s clear from the survey results that when it comes to custom cake making in the UK, woman command the field.
The average age (at 51 years old) was over a decade higher than the median age of the female population of the UK. This may in part be reflective of many of the businesses being started as a second career during or after raising a family.
The cake makers who responded to the survey were from every region of the UK. The percentage split is mostly in line with the UK’s population split but Scotland, the South East and the South West had a few more cake makers than we expected. They clearly like their cake there!
In terms of ethnicity, 94% of respondents identified as white as opposed to the latest national average of 87.2% (Index Mundi – UK demographics Profile). There is some uncertainty as to the reasons there seems to be less representation within the cake industry nationally. This is an area we would be keen to hear views on, and which we will further investigate and address in detail next year.
A family resemblance
When it comes to the differences and similarities of custom cakers in the UK, there is much that unites us.
Custom cake makers who identified themselves as hobbyists were an average of 51 years old. When it comes to experience, 71% of them had five or more years making custom cakes. They’re a busy bunch, designing and creating an average of 17 cakes a year.
Across the regions there were some real differences in the number of cakes each hobbyist was producing. The busiest hobby cakers in the land are to be found in Scotland where they average 20 cakes per year!
Custom cakers who identified themselves as businesses were a touch younger, at an average age of 47. The majority of them (59%) had five or more years experience in running a business. That business was responsible for delivering an average of 77 cakes a year to parties and celebrations.
Size of business
The path to making custom cakes in the UK is typically: caking for friends and family, caking for costs, and then caking for profit. As a result, many cake businesses start small and many of us are REALLY micro businesses.
Nearly half of all custom cake making businesses (46%) reported earning less than £4,999 a year.
Fourteen percent of businesses had no idea how much they’d earned.
It seems that many of the respondents are using their business as a sweet side gig for additional income rather than the primary source of income in the household. The fact that 14% didn’t know how much they took in a year speaks to the organic way many cake business start – first as a hobby, and then worked out into a business proper later.
The average number of cakes being made across the board per year is 77. The average cake price was not asked for specifically, but based on answers to related questions, it can be worked our as significantly less that £100. Given that cake makers are producing individually handcrafted cakes, taking hours to produce, this is a seriously low number.
Undercharging is an endemic issue that undermines the profitability and lifespan of custom cake businesses.
Whilst the sector is predominantly made up of very small business, 10% of businesses were making more than 200 cakes per year. So while takings may be low, workload for some is extremely high.
In terms of income at the upper end of the spectrum, 13% of UK custom cake businesses earned between £20,000-£200,000 per year.
Caking Confidence
When it comes to how we feel about our skill levels, though we’re all at different ages and stages of our cake journey, we have a lot in common when it comes to confidence.
The following graph identifies the confidence levels part-time and full-time cakers had towards various essential aspects of running their businesses.
It ought to be noted that these are self-reported levels. They are not indicative of actual skill levels or a quantifiable knowledge base.
We can see that generally we feel fairly confident with cake making. Although hobbyists are less confident with decorating. That areas that have us feeling a bit wobbly are all on the business side of things!
The impact of COVID and future plans
Only 1.8% of respondents said they had closed their business due to the pandemic. It is believed that the number is higher based on anecdotal evidence. However, a closed business does not have a lot of motivation to fill out a cake survey! Of those who did respond 75% expressed a desire to restart their business in the future.
Necessity is the mother of invention and the cancellation of all major events certainly brought some creativity out of the industry. 35% of respondents developed new products or services to get through the lockdowns. 64% of those new products were postal baked goods. Another 6% developed online classes. It will be interesting to see where these new ventures go as restrictions ease.
Hope is high for increased revenue this year among cake makers, as 64% of respondents said they believed takings in the third quarter of 2021 would outstrip those of the same period in 2019
Favourite Brands and Products
The Great British Survey this year opened the kitchen door of hobby cakers and custom cake business to see what products were in their cupboards and who they were buying from. We looked at three categories: fondant, colourings and cake supply companies.
It was fascinating to be finally able to independently appraise which products were used day to day, and by whom.
The full survey provides the top ten in each category and associated scores. It also breaks out the preferences of hobby bakers from professional bakers which are quite distinct. Here are the TOP 3 preferences overall, for hobbyists and for businesses.
OVERALL TOP 3 PREFERRED BRANDS
HOBBYIST’S TOP 3 PREFERRED BRANDS
BUSINESSES’ TOP 3 PREFERRED BRANDS
There you have it. A fork-full of flavour from
The Great British Cake Survey 2021.
Want to buy the full detailed 46 page report?
Thank You
First of all thank you to everyone who took part. We were blown away and incredibly grateful that you stepped into the picture.
We would also like to thank Falmouth University for their help and support in developing the survey, running it, and crunching the numbers.
Then there are the amazing team at Cake Stuff who sponsored the survey and helped us get it off the ground. To ensure their sponsorship did not bias the results their logo and name did not appear on the survey itself….and they were still willing to sponsor it. Amazing.
