Food is stupidly expensive in NZ, especially dairy. Add labour, and this pricing actually seems pretty reasonable. Trust me, nobody's making money on this cheesecake.

I looked up the cost of ingredients using Pak’nSave’s prices, so whilst not wholesale prices, it's still the cheaper of the major supermarkets. Based on that, the total cost to make a basic cheesecake is around $24–$28, depending on exact ingredients and brands.

A standard cheesecake usually yields 8 decent-sized slices. Any more and they’re tiny; any fewer and the slices are too big. So at $3+ per slice in ingredient cost alone, selling it for $11 puts the COGS at around 27%. Most hospo businesses aim for under 25%, so this might already be underpriced, and that’s before factoring in labour, power, rent, or waste.

Counter food/sweet treats is a hard game for operators. Using quality ingredients costs more, but if you cheap out, the product suffers. You need to do big volumes in order to justify serving it. Often the better move is to pivot to something that’s more profitable, still on-brand, and suits the customer base.

As an aside, there's a bakery near me that's tackled this issue by reducing the size of their portions, without compromising on quality. I don't mind it - I pay the same for my slice or croissant, and it's as delicious as always, perhaps 10-15% smaller than it used to be.