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Amid rising costs, labor disruption, and historic wildfires in Los Angeles last year, consumers still showed up for their favorite local businesses. The around $6 bakery item became one of LA’s most dependable pleasures in 2025. “The everyday, end-of-the-week treat does persist,” said Heather Wong, owner of Flouring LA, a bakery in Chinatown. Even in a tough year, consumers prioritize affordable indulgences.
According to internal Square data, top sold items at the 50 busiest bakeries in Los Angeles averaged $6.50 between January and October of 2025.
For business owners, this pricing pattern goes beyond cultural insight and becomes operational intelligence. Understanding where customers reliably say yes can help bakery owners design menus, portion sizes, and set prices to protect margins without slowing demand. At Flouring LA, that means selling beautiful, avant-garde custom cakes to wedding clients, but also catering to everyday customers with items like brownies, cookies, and cake slices, which Wong says help create longevity for the business. “I didn’t want to just be a bakery that catered to wedding clients. I wanted to serve the greater community,” she said.
The rise of “affordable indulgence”
Popular bakeries that sold items for around $6 came from all over Los Angeles, even in higher-priced areas or places with busier foot traffic patterns. Translation: LA residents of all types — students, freelancers, commuters, artists, parents — will spend on joy as long as it feels proportionate and repeatable. A $6 treat can be part of a routine. A $9 cookie becomes a special occasion.
Wong sees this consumer behavior play out daily. “I think when people see double digits, meaning like $10 and up for something, that is harder to swallow,” she said. This tension between cost and perception is one many LA bakery owners navigate. Chocolate prices are up. Labor is up. Rent is up almost everywhere. Yet raising the price of a signature cookie can shift the entire rhythm of sales.
Economists call the tendency for consumers to favor small indulgences during economic downturns rather than larger discretionary purchases the “lipstick effect.” But Los Angeles, perhaps more than most cities, has built its social life around cafés, pastry counters, matcha bars, and grab-and-go windows. “What’s been most surprising is, so we’re a cake shop, but what we sell so much of? Yes, cake. But also, just the chocolate chip cookie,” said Wong.
Designing your menu for a value-driven consumer
To cater to consumers’ price tolerances, Wong added cake bars to her menu five years ago, which are individually portioned, small slices of cake. “A smaller slice for a lower price allowed you to get many slices. So you felt like you were getting more for the money,” Wong said. “You could get three slices of cake and pay $18, where one slice of traditional wedge cake would be like $15.”
The cake bars offer variety without the excess portion or price tag of a full wedge slice. “That just felt like a better value, so we kept that system,” she said.
Other menu strategies bakery owners can use to combat rising costs include rotating high-cost ingredients like chocolate to control margins, or keeping lower cost, highly purchased items, like cookies on the menu. Downsizing portion sizes through half-sized pastries, petite specialty drinks, or sampler boxes can maintain value for your customer and protect your business’s margins. Additionally, flavor swaps can add variety to the items consumers want without raising prices.
What LA bakery customers reach for most—no matter the neighborhood
Familiar and comforting foods are what customers reach for most right now. Internal Square data analyzing all bakery sales from late 2025 revealed the most popular under $6 menu items include:
Beverages:
- Latte
- Americano
- Cold brew
- Cappuccino
- Drip coffee
- Matcha
Pastries:
- Croissant
- Doughnut
- Scone
- Bagel
- Baguette
A lot of items on this list are the quintessential “brown food” Wong joked. Not trendy, not experimental, not over-engineered — just dependable. Croissants consistently average around the $4.90 mark across the city and move in high volume. Matcha drinks hit the slightly higher end of the sweet spot (around $5.00–$5.60), but still qualify as an affordable luxury. Drip coffee, at $3.70, anchors the lower end. They’re also one of the few treats that double as community touch points. They provide a small, affordable reason to step outside, say hi to the barista who knows your name, and feel plugged into your neighborhood for a moment.
What this means for your menu (and your margins)
Price is a driving factor whether or not a customer chooses to treat themselves. The businesses seeing the strongest resilience are those designing menus around the psychological comfort zone where joy feels easy to say yes to.
For bakery owners navigating rising costs, this pricing window offers a roadmap:
- Consider your profit margins and cost of goods sold relative to your pricing.
- Use portion size and menu design to maximize perceived value.
- Save premium pricing for specialty or experiential items.
- Lean into comfort foods—the classics often outperform the trendy.
Above all, stay agile.
“The economy, politics, things will push and pull business, and so you have to pivot your marketing accordingly,” said Wong. For the city that loves its morning pastries and afternoon matcha, the humble $6 treat has revealed itself to be the heartbeat of LA’s café culture.
