Mashed Survey: Where Do You Go To Get Your Birthday Cakes?

Birthdays are a time of celebration that generally involve gatherings with immediate family and close friends. The festivities might entail something as simple as going out to dinner to a favorite restaurant or, for those of age, heading to a bar to indulge in an adult beverage or two.

Whatever activity it encompasses, at some point the occasion will invariably feature a birthday cake and lighted candles to acknowledge another successful trip around the sun for the celebrant. Depending on individual preferences, it could be anything from a traditional birthday cake with vanilla cake and white frosting or a chocolate cake with chocolate icing to a red velvet cake or carrot cake. There are even ice cream cakes that you can buy at the grocery store or ice cream shops that specialize in this particular product such as Carvel or Dairy Queen.

The options for procuring your birthday cake are numerous and each person has their own go-to source. Mashed conducted a survey exploring the question of where people go to get their birthday cakes and this is what we learned.

The survey polled 582 respondents and the answer choices for the survey included big box stores (e.g. Walmart, Target), ice cream shops (Cold Stone Creamery, Dairy Queen), warehouse stores (Costco, Sam's Club), regional grocery stores, local bakeries, and I make them homemade. Results indicated that people love supporting local businesses, with the highest percentage of respondents at 29.21% saying they get their cakes from a local bakery.

Coming in at a fairly distant second place with 18.56% of responses were those who make homemade birthday cakes. Regional grocery stores logged third place, tallying 18.04% of responses. Big box stores followed next at 16.84% while warehouse stores (9.62%) and ice cream shops (7.72%) brought up the rear. The survey revealed that ice cream cakes appear to be more of a niche offering for birthdays.

But the act of baking one's own birthday cakes for special occasions seems to be fairly popular. For those DIY-ers seeking out their next confectionary project, we've got you covered with this traditional birthday cake recipe. Bake your birthday cake and eat it too.