How Much Cake Should A Café Order Each Week?

Ordering cake for a café can feel like a strange little guessing game. Order too little and your counter looks bare by lunchtime. Order too much and you’re staring at leftover brownie on Friday afternoon.

How Much Cake Should A Café Order Each Week?

So, how much cake should a café order each week? The best place to start is with portions, not whole cakes.

Start With Portions

Think about how many slices of cake you expect to sell each day, then multiply that by the number of days you’re open. The majority of our traybakes are pre-portioned to 16 slices.

As a rough guide:

 

Weather, weekends, school holidays and one very hungry regular can all change things. But it gives you a sensible place to start.

 

The good news is that we have no minimum order limitations on our online  shop so you can order the amount that fits your business the best. If you have extra freezer space, we'd recommend ordering 6 traybakes or more as you will automatically qualify for an extra 10% discount. We offer 10% for all orders over £160 and free delivery for all orders over £120.

For A Small Café

If you’re a smaller café, or you’re trying wholesale cake for the first time, start with 3 to 6 cakes a week.

A good first order might include:

That gives your customers a bit of choice without turning your counter into a cake traffic jam and helps you to keep the cakes fresh for longer.

For A Busier Café

If your café has steady footfall and a cake counter that does some proper work, 6 to 10 cakes a week may be a better starting point.

At this stage, build your order around your bestsellers.

If your brownie flies out every week, order more of it. If a cake quietly sits there looking hopeful, order less of it. Judge your audience as different cafes sell different cakes depending on their customer base.

 

What Cakes Should A Café Stock First?

If you’re new to wholesale cake, here's some of our suggestions. The best cakes to start with are usually the ones customers understand quickly:

Familiar cakes sell well because customers don’t need a full explanation while the queue behind them is gently huffing into their flat whites. We've got you covered for giving your customers the cake info though, as we offer free POS ingredient cards. You can also order a POS pack that includes takeaway bags, beautiful takeaway boxes and all that jazz.

We've also made things a little easier for you by coming up with our 'bestsellers' bundle to get you started.

How To Avoid Ordering Too Much

The best way to reduce waste is to keep notes for a few weeks.

Track three simple things:

  1. Which cakes sold out first?
  2. Which cakes were left at the end of the week?
  3. Which cakes did your staff recommend easily?

That last one matters. If your team can describe a cake quickly and happily, it has a much better chance of selling.

 

Think About Your Busy Days

Not all café days are equal.

Saturday might be chaos. Monday might be sleepy. Friday afternoon might suddenly become busy.

Look at when your customers actually buy cake, then shape your order around that. You may need more cake before the weekend, or a smaller order at the start of the week.

Keep The Counter Looking Good

How much cake you sell is not just about how much you order. It’s also about how the counter looks.

A good cake counter should feel:

  • Generous
  • Fresh
  • Colourful
  • Easy to choose from

Too empty and it looks like all the good stuff has gone. Too full and it starts to look like there is too much choice.

Pre-marked cakes can help here because portions stay consistent, margins are easier to manage and nobody ends up cutting a brownie the size of a paving slab.

 

The Golden Rule

The best cake order is not always the biggest order.

It’s the one that keeps your counter looking good, your waste low, your staff confident and your customers returning.

At Exploding Bakery, we make wholesale cakes for cafés, coffee shops, farm shops and food-loving places across the UK. Our cakes are made to be sliced, served, displayed, snaffled and reordered without making your week any more complicated than it already is.

Browse the wholesale range and build a first order that works for your café.