He had never been to the East Coast before, but it was Bob Kronbauer’s love for a Maritime-made cake that saw that change.
The British Columbia-based content creator tracked how inflation impacted the McCain Deep ‘N Delicious cake at five different grocers between 2023 and 2024.
He put out a call to McCain Foods, a New Brunswick family food dynasty who’s known as one of the world’s largest manufacturers of frozen potato products.
“Fly me out to Calgary or Ontario or wherever you make these delicious cakes, Deep ‘N Delicious cakes, and I will do a ‘how it’s made,’” he said in a social media video posted Jan. 27.
They agreed. A week later he found himself in the cake assembly line in their Florenceville-Bristol factory.
“It was wild. I made sure, I was like, ‘So nobody has ever filmed in here?’ And they were like, ‘No, we always tell everybody to leave their phones. Nobody’s ever done a ‘how it’s made,’” he said. “And I was the first person to film inside of the cake line.”
For many Maritimers, the dessert is a childhood favourite, but Kronbauer says it’s just as popular in the west.
He said the experience was one of his top five favourites in recent memory.
A cake is pictured on a McCain’s assembly line in Florenceville-Bristol, N.B. (Source: Bob Kronbauer)The tour took him deep into the delicious details.
“The way they explain it to me is, it’s like a cake mix at your house. So there’s dry in a bag and they pour the dry stuff into this humongous vat. And then there’s a tube that has the liquid eggs and the water … And then the two mix up, and then that goes through a thing into another room and then it squirts it into the little pans, the little aluminum tins that are actually made here,” he explained.
The main event was his favourite part.
“Definitely the icing was the coolest thing there. It rolls up. It’s a conveyor belt thing and it rolls up and there’s a big piece of metal with all the little holes. And then it goes PLUNK. And then keeps going,” he said.
Cakes are pictured on McCain’s cake assembly line in Florenceville-Bristol, N.B. (Source: Bob Kronbauer)
Today, you can only find the cakes in Canada and the Middle East.
He’s working on putting together a ‘how it’s made’ video, and is hoping someday he can come back and document how the McCain pizza pockets are made.
McCain Foods did not return CTV Atlantic’s request for comment.
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