Oser Communications Group

1 4 SNACKING NEWS December 2018 SNACKING NEWS Dockside Market's Cakes, Cookies Taste of the Tropics BY ROBIN MATHER It's been a big year for Dockside Market, the Miami, Florida-based baker of tropi- cally flavored Bundt cakes and cookies. The bakery, owned by Donna Wilson and Christine Brown, moved into a new space and celebrated its 40th year at the new bakery's grand opening in May. The company, founded in 1978, was created specifically to sell key lime cakes. Its founders chose cakes because the perennially popular key lime pies were hard to ship. Wilson bought the cake por- tion of the business about 13 years ago from the founders, who owned a clothing and home decoration store in the Florida Keys. "I'm good friends with the founders," she says. "Cakes weren't really what they did. But I have a house in the Keys and was really familiar with the cakes and knew how delicious they were." To say that Wilson is a natu- ral for a bakery business would be an understatement. "My family started baking in Miami in the early 1900s," she says. "They delivered bread and milk with a horse-drawn wagon. At one point, the Fuchs Baking Company was the largest privately-owned bakery in the country. It later became the Holsum Bakery." In fact, the Fuchs Bakery building in Homestead, Florida, built in 1914, was the first concrete vernacular- style commercial building in Homestead. The company moved to Miami after it outgrew its Homestead bakery, but its original building earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. An antiques store now occupies the build- ing. "Everyone loved the key lime cake," Wilson says. "We were the first ones to do one. Over the years, we added cakes in ba- nana, chocolate, coconut, lemon, orange, rum, and vanilla with chocolate chips fla- vors. Always with a tropical theme." Brown partnered in the company in 2016, bringing marketing and technologi- cal expertise to the company, Wilson says. It's a Secret! Wilson says Dockside has a secret recipe for its super-moist Bundt cakes, but "we use natural key lime juice and coconut milk, for example. We glaze our cakes, and a lot of times, we use the juices of whatever they're flavored with – lime juice in the key lime, orange juice in the orange." Dockside's cakes are available in two sizes – a 24-ounce cake that serves 10 to 12 with a suggested retail price of $23.99, and mini-cakes of four ounces with a sug- gested retail price of $5.99. About three years ago, Dockside added cookies to its product lines. These, too, fol- low the tropical flavors theme. Breezers are available in key lime with white chocolate chips, Honeybell tanger- ine with chocolate chips and coconut with pecans and chocolate chips. The crunchy, bite-sized cook- ies come in a six-ounce box with a suggested re- tail of $8.99, and in a five-ounce resealable bag with a suggested re- tail price of $5.99. Thimbles, which re- semble traditional wed- ding cookies dusted with confectioner's sugar, come in key lime and orange flavors. Their suggested retail price is $9.99 for a seven- ounce box. The company ships its products all over the country, via UPS and FedEx, Wilson says, but customers need never worry about getting a stale cake. "We freeze them after baking because it helps them not crack in shipping," she says. "But we thaw them before shipping, so every recipient is getting a fresh cake. They have a 21-day shelf life, and they're packed in a box with a window so you can see the cake inside." Additional Ways to Market Dockside participates in a variety of other marketing methods, Wilson says. "We do a lot of drop-shipping, where our product is listed in someone's catalog. When a customer orders from them, they send us the information and we ship di- rectly to the customer." The company has joined Orangebelly.com, a consumer-facing web- site that offers regional specialties from around the country, and its products are sold on qvc.com, she says. Corporate gifts have also been a profit center for Dockside, Wilson says. "We do attorneys' offices that order 600 cakes," she says, "but we also do smaller ones with only 10 customers. Sometimes the gifts are for the employees; sometimes they're for the company's clients." The new bigger bakery, which "brings everything under one roof," will help the company keep up as it continues to grow, Wilson says. "It's giving us more flexibil- ity to develop seasonal products and new flavor profiles." And, she says, the company does a lot of private-label and co-packing business. "Right now, we're doing rum cakes for someone," she says, "and we just started working with a company that has just started a nut-cluster company." Judging from the growth in this year alone, it's a good bet that Dockside Market won't remain a four-employee company for long. n Packaged Facts Predicts Growth in Chocolate Candy Sales Market research firm Packaged Facts esti- mates total retail dollar sales of the U.S. chocolate candy market will reach $23 bil- lion in 2018, with sales increasing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 2 percent between 2013 and 2018. The market estimates are featured in the recently published report, "Chocolate Candy: U.S. Market Trends and Opportu- nities, 12th Edition." The report is the first in a trio of studies by Packaged Facts on the U.S. confectionery market, including upcoming reports on chewing gum and non-chocolate candy. Looking ahead, Packaged Facts fore- casts growth for the chocolate candy mar- ket through 2023. "The chocolate market is indisputably dynamic with a strong pace of innovation, an influx of creative new players, and a steady flow of new products that engage diverse groups of consumers," says David Sprinkle, Research Director for Packaged Facts. "There remains consumer devotion to confectionery products and the role of chocolate candy in particular as an acces- sible luxury, creating many opportunities to trade consumers up to premium prod- ucts." As to be expected, seasonality also in- fluences consumer purchases of candy and other snack foods. Sales typically spike around holidays due to the common prac- tice of gifting and consuming snacks as part of these celebrations. These factors, coupled with a steadily rising population, confer stability to a U.S. chocolate candy market that is mature yet growing. Pack- aged Facts estimates that holiday and sea- sonal chocolates account for about a quarter of the market's sales. Easter is the largest segment, followed by Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Halloween. Packaged Facts, a division of Marke- tResearch.com, publishes market intelli- gence on a wide range of consumer market topics, including consumer de- mographics and shopper insights, con- sumer financial products and services, consumer goods and retailing, and pet products and services. Packaged Facts also offers a full range of custom re- search services. For more information, visit www .packagedfacts.com. n

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