Students have taken on the challenge of marketing Dundee Cake around the world.
The project will culminate in business-style pitches to experts from cake company Goodfellow and Steven, as well as Dundee City Council.
It is part of marketing activities at Abertay University which bring in external companies to set real-life problems for students.
The challenge comes at an important time for Dundee Cake, currently being considered for a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) under the EU Protected Food Names scheme.
This would mean only the cake made in the city, to a traditional recipe, can be marketed as Dundee Cake.
Such a status would prevent low-quality, copy-cat products being sold, protecting the manufacturers and the reputation of the cake.
Dundee Cake is decorated with whole, blanched almonds and is a rich, moist, all-butter ‘afternoon tea’ fruit cake.
Arbroath smokies, Aberdeen Angus beef and Stornoway black pudding all have special status under European law.
Dr Turner, of Abertay University’s Dundee Business School, said: “We have incredibly talented, hard-working students at Abertay and we’re always looking for opportunities to let them apply what they learn in the classroom to real-world problems.
“It’s absolutely crucial to their careers to understand how businesses work and the actual challenges they’re facing.
“Working with Goodfellow and Steven to develop marketing plans for Dundee Cake has been a very exciting project and we’ve seen exceptional levels of creativity and commercial ideas.”
Martin Goodfellow, of Goodfellow and Steven, said: “Abertay University has an excellent Business School so it was a natural choice for us to try and use some homegrown talent to do some targeted market research for us.”
The definitive Dundee Cake recipe submitted for EU approval was developed in partnership with Food Innovation @ Abertay. They started with a matrix of 30 recipes spanning from the 1800s to the present day to determine the common ingredients down the decades and held taste trials with more than 400 Dundonians in City Square.