Product Snapshot: Nearly 200 bakers at Rubicon Bakers work hands-on, scratch-baking cakes, cupcakes, and other baked goodness for retail sale at more than 2,500 stores across the country. Their daily goal and mantra? “Bake a Better World” through conscious practices, from hiring and training those with significant barriers to employment, to meticulous sourcing of all-natural, clean ingredients. Now, ‘Bake a Better World’ is manifested in four new cupcake and cake SKUs: Vegan Chocolate Blackout Cake and Cupcakes, and Vegan Vanilla Cake and Cupcakes, each with 100 percent dreamy vegan cream filling and frosting.

Plant-based foods are booming and moving beyond the dairy-alternative case to other parts of the grocery store.  According to a Nielsen study conducted for the Plant Based Foods Association and the Good Food Institute, sales of plant-based food in the US went up by 8.1 percent in 2017, topping $3.1 billion. Now, in-store bakeries can also offer vegan products with the launch of Rubicon Bakers’ newest cake and cupcake SKUs.

“One of our core values as a company is ‘delight’ and we are proud to share that with millions of people who choose to eat a plant-based diet, in addition to those that don’t,” said Andrew Stoloff, Rubicon Bakers president. “Our new vegan product line features natural chocolate and vanilla flavors, and is decadent, rich and ready to be enjoyed by all types of eaters.”

After more than a year in research and development, the new 4-inch Vegan Vanilla Cake with vanilla filling and frosting, and 4-inch Vegan Chocolate Blackout Cake with chocolate filling and frosting, are perfectly sized double layer 11-oz cakes with an SRP of $6.99 each. Rubicon Bakers’ latest cupcake innovation comes in two forms—a Vegan Vanilla Cupcake with vanilla filling and frosting, and a Chocolate Blackout Cupcake with chocolate cream filling and frosting, each in a 10-oz four-pack container with an SRP of $4.99. Vegan sugar, chocolate chips, vanilla and Non-GMO expeller-pressed canola oil are some of the straightforward, clean and plant-based ingredients used in this new line of vegan desserts, which are available at selected Whole Foods Markets, Sprouts, Northern California Safeways, Natural Grocers and other progressive retailers.