Croissants were the second most consumed bakery item, after cakes.
Brits’ consumption of sweet bakery and dessert products has risen by 5.5% year on year and more than 9% over the last five years, according to new statistics published by the NPD Group.
Consumers ate their way through 1.5bn servings of biscuits, pastries, cakes and pies in the year to September, with the five most popular treats accounting for more than two thirds of this. The most popular items were cakes, selling 406m units, followed by croissants on 155m units, cookies, brownies and muffins.
Since the year ending September 2010, annual servings of cakes are up +9.6% (36 million extra servings) and it’s a similar story for croissants (up 21% over five years), brownies (up 72%) and muffins (up 27%).
NPD Group has accredited the increase in part to the success of BBC baking competition The Great British Bake Off.
Despite the increases, the market research company said that the effect wasn’t being felt by high street bakeries because they were not capturing this growing business. Bakery shops have seen little growth overall in sales of sweet bakery and dessert items over the past five years. While the total market grew 9.2% over the past five years in terms of servings, bakery shops only increased business by 2.5% over the same period. Bakeries even faced a 3.1% decline in servings in the year ending September 2015 compared to the previous year. Bakers face strong competition from other suppliers, in particular popular high street coffee shops, which notched up 186m servings of sweet bakery and dessert treats for the year ending September, 8.9% more than the previous year.
NPD Group foodservice account manager Muriel Illig said: “Has the Great British Bake Off stimulated our appetite for these treats? Yes, the figures show that when it comes to servings of the top five sweet bakery and dessert favourite,s it’s very much a case of the Great British bakery and dessert take-off. With another Bake-Off series next summer, we’ll once again watch tasty bakes come to life – and many more of us will be tempted by these goodies.
“What’s in store for the future? Is the hunger for baked indulgence growing? Consumption of sweet bakery and dessert products could easily increase as the Great British baking revolution continues.”
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