Teacake Sales Soar After Ceremony

Sales of Tunnock's teacakes have soared after they featured in the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games, a supermarket has said. Customers have been stocking up on the sweet treat after giant dancing teacakes whirled around Celtic Park on Wednesday night. Waitrose said that in the 24 hours following the ceremony, sales of the chocolate-coated marshmallow snack rose by 62%. David Jones, supply chain director at Waitrose, said: We usually expect to see people marking major sporting events with a barbecue or a beer with friends and family - but the sudden demand for Tunnock's teacakes isn't something we anticipated."We will certainly be stocking up to meet customer demand.'' Fergus Loudon, operations director of Tunnock's, said they had no idea that the ceremony would feature teacakes dancing, although they had given permission for the iconic image to be used. He said: We knew they were going to use an image of the teacakes but because the ceremony was a closely-guarded secret we didn't know to what extent they were being used."We were absolutely bowled over when we saw there were 30 large teacakes in the ceremony." We were blown away by the exposure and we felt quite humbled that the producers of the ceremony felt that the brand merited the exposure.'' He said the company has not yet noticed a rise in sales because it takes time for the orders to filter through, but that he was not surprised by the Waitrose figures. However he said they are expecting to see an increase in sales in view of all the attention following the ceremony. According to its website, the company was founded by Thomas Tunnock in 1890 after he paid #80 for a shop in Uddingston, South Lanarkshire. It operated only as bakers and purveyors ofquality flour confectionery'' until the 1950s when it created the now well-loved caramel wafers, snowballs, caramel logs and teacakes.