La Rocca celebrates 30 years with cake that highlights its greatest hits
La Rocca Creative Cakes is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a Greatest Hits Cake that combines several layers of its best-selling cakes.
The eight-inch cake is being sold by most major grocers in Ontario, excluding Walmart, and a number of independents.
Philippe Gaudet, vice-president, sales and marketing, at La Rocca in Richmond Hill, Ont., says the company thought the best way to celebrate its 30th would be to create a cake made with some of its core products.
“It makes for a pretty delicious item that’s being really well received (and) a really cool, fun thing to share with the consumer.”
The cake incorporates La Rocca’s most popular cakes such as Truffle Royale, Super Caramel Crunch and Red Velvet on a Devil’s food chocolate sponge base and with a vanilla-flavoured ‘pearls’ topping, the symbol of the 30th anniversary. It will be available through the Christmas holidays.
Gaudet says the cake is complex to produce because it has seven layers. It’s also La Rocca’s first nude or open-sided cake, so made to ensure consumers can see the layers.
The cake will generally sell between $25 and $30 at major retailers, which Gaudet says is priced at par or slightly higher than other cakes.
It was launched Sept. 30 with in-store tastings at most Longo’s.
“The response was great,” says Gaudet, who audited several of the stores. Many of the stores sold out of the cake.
“There is not a lot of news happening in the cake business,” says Gaudet, adding that it was nice to see a little bit of buzz in a category that doesn’t get a lot of PR and give it some excitement.
In advance of the launch, about 60 cakes and press kits were distributed to key influencers and media, generating 545,000 impressions on Instagram of the #LaRocca30 hashtag. Each person received a custom kit including the cake, prosecco, confetti, candles, plates and forks, a custom created cake plate and cutter.
La Rocca is also working on an influencer program this month.
Although La Rocca sells across Canada, the Greatest Hits Cake is limited to Ontario, where it’s being delivered fresh daily to stores. The company was concerned the rigours of frozen transport and “freeze-thaw temperature abuse” would wreak havoc on the cake and declined requests from national retailers to sell it nationwide.
Although the cake category doesn’t get a lot of brand recognition, La Rocca knew the Greatest Hits Cake would be “buzzworthy,” Gaudet says.
La Rocca, which considers itself Canada’s largest private and bestselling cake bakery by volume, is considering launching a simplified version of the Greatest Hits Cake next year.