Selling Like Hotcakes
Recently I bought a gift for a friend online. The website had interesting titles for its categories. One was called, “Interesting Little Product.” However, I ended up purchasing a product from “Sell like hot cakes.” I think that might have influenced my decision. I thought it was funny and cute.
The term, selling like hotcakes refers to something that has a lot of demand. There are many being sold, or they are selling as quickly as they can be made. The album, Map of the Soul: 7 by BTS is the fastest selling album of all time. In 2020, it was selling like hotcakes. As a matter of fact, the top five fastest selling items were by Korean bands. BTS has four of the top five and Seventeen has the other.
Example: Quickly, Jenny, make some more orange juice. It is selling like hotcakes.
Hotcakes is an American word for pancakes. Some other names for pancakes are flapjacks and griddle cake. Selling like hotcakes has been used since at least 1839, with some sources believing that the phrase dates back to the 1600s. However, I believe those sources are confusing the origin of the phrase with the origin of the word, hotcake.
Even though the word hotcake goes back to the 17th century, pancakes have been around a long time. Pancakes were one of the first cereal products to spread across the globe. Medieval Europeans, ancient Greeks and Romans loved the food. The earliest evidence of pancakes is from 30,000 years ago. Researchers analyzed starch grains on 30,000-year-old grinding tools and postulated that they must have been making a bread similar to a pancake. However, these ancient chefs used cattails and ferns instead of flour and milk.
Another famous example is Otzi the Iceman. His body has been preserved for 5300 years buried in ice. Researchers examined his stomach contents and found grain and charcoal amongst other content. This suggests that the grain was cooked over coal, likely in a similar style to a pancake.
It seems a lot of people connect the phrase with selling pancakes at church socials or public fairs. No one event started this phrase. But hotcakes were popular at the socials and fairs. Often, they would sell out as soon as the cake came off the griddle.
Can you think of any other examples of something selling like hotcakes?
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Reference:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/hot-off-the-griddle-heres-the-history-of-pancakes
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/19S50yx269xNj76JSPbx4VF/flipping-fantastic-facts-about-pancakes
https://www.theidioms.com/sell-like-hot-cakes/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fastest-selling_products
http://www.word-detective.com/2010/01/selling-like-hotcakes/
https://www.thetravel.com/where-did-pancakes-originate/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6065529/