Supply and demand cake

Illustration by Brian Breneman

Safeway has vegan chocolate cake in its bakery. Correction: Safeway had vegan chocolate cake. The V Word contacted multiple area stores from Natomas to El Dorado Hills, and not one had put in another order for the 8-inch Chocolate Midnight Cake, which is too bad, because its existence had vegans high-fiving each other on the Web and social media over the last two months. The chance to purchase a hard-to-attain treat in a mainstream grocer is pretty exciting, even if the cakes aren't baked on-site, but are frozen and distributed to the stores. And they cost only nine bucks. One Safeway bakery employee said the cakes weren't big sellers. A hypothesis: That dessert's demographic probably doesn't peruse the generally vegan-unfriendly goods in the bakery. So, sweet-toothed vegans, now you know: Call a local Safeway, press two for the bakery department and demand the vegan cake. If high-school economics lessons were right, supply will follow.