The ethos is simple: Your cake should taste even better than it looks. This is what The Caker has become known for and has grown a cult following for its recipe books, baking kits and made-to-order cakes.
What is your company background, how did you start the business?
Jordan Rondel created The Caker in late 2010 as a made-to-order cake business. She has since grown it into one of the leading cake companies in New Zealand, with 4 published recipe books, a massive social media following, a weekly column in the national New Zealand newspaper insert, Sunday Magazine, and several on-going brand partnerships. Customers and avid fans from New Zealand and worldwide have an undying appetite for Jordan’s unique recipes and signature baking style.
The idea for Cake Kit range came from a desire to be able to share The Caker’s style and ethos with everyone in a new way beyond published recipes and made-to-order cakes. Jordan wanted to reshape the way consumers think of baking mixes as a highly processed product with basic flavour options. She was determined to create an accessible yet luxury baking kit that could double as a beautiful gift option.
The Cake Kit range currently consists of 3 flavours, soon to be 6, all of which are based on best selling recipes from The Caker’s made-to-order cake menu. Each kit contains carefully selected high-quality ingredients from the same suppliers that are used in Jordan’s bakery every day.
What is the current product range and variants and how do these products stand out in the market?
Food items made from a box aren’t traditionally a desirable commodity, yet today we crave convenience. Meal-kit companies have managed to solve this problem for everyday meals, amalgamating health, quality, and convenience into an accessible package.
Baking kits, however, still lag behind. More often than not, they are made with cheap and unwholesome ingredients, and most people associate them with producing cakes which are lower quality than cakes made from scratch.
Enter, The Caker’s cake kits. These are made with top quality, carefully sourced ingredients and take the concept of a traditional baking mix one step further by introducing innovative flavours, multiple components, and the opportunity to buy into a luxury brand.
The Caker has a figurehead chef, Jordan Rondel, who has strong, trending values around food and creates an addictive desire for people to emulate her style in their own baking. When you bake a cake kit by The Caker, you’re baking one of Jordan’s intimately crafted recipes, using ingredients she has hand-selected and weighed out for you. The kits can be made in her style to create a finished product customers are proud to post to social media and exclaim ‘I baked this cake from a Caker kit’.
Every aspect of the packaging for The Caker cake kits has been carefully considered, from the glossy metallic box, which is intended to be repurposed, to the Jeurgen Teller inspired photography on the sleeves. They are intended to look less like food items and more like cosmetic or perfume boxes. The avant-garde look and feel of these kits mean they can sit on shelves anywhere from gourmet grocers, to gift, concept and fashion stores.
What are the plans for the business moving forward, is there any expansion on the horizon?
With a shelf life of 1 year, the cake kits are perfect for export and it's time to get them into Australia, Europe and Asia.
This year (2020) we expanded operations into California, and have begun to manufacture our line of cake kits there. New Zealand production remains the same, and this will cater the southern hemisphere, while USA production will cater the northern hemisphere.
Where are your products currently available to buy, and are you looking at or wanting to expand your availability?
We have around 30 wholesale stockists around New Zealand, including New Worlds and Farro Fresh stores. We would really like to get our products into Countdown stores.
For more information visit thecaker.co.nz and follow on Facebook and Instagram.
