Sell like hot cakes means to sell very quickly and in large numbers. It is usually said about products or tickets that people buy up fast. In British English, people also say go like hot cakes.
When would you say sell like hot cakes?
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sell like hot cakes; go like hot cakes; be selling like hot cakes
- The new phone sold like hot cakes, and most shops ran out by lunchtime.
- Our homemade lemonade went like hot cakes at the school fair.
- Tickets for the festival are selling like hot cakes, so book yours this week.
What changed
First versionHer cookbooks sold like hot pies in December.
RevisionHer cookbooks sold like hot cakes in December.
Hot pies may look like a small change, but a native speaker won't recognise the phrase: the English idiom always uses hot cakes. The verb changes with the tense, while the comparison stays the same: sell, sold, are selling like hot cakes.
Sell out means “sell everything, until none is left”: The tickets sold out in an hour. Sell like hot cakes is about how fast things sell, not about whether they have run out. In an essay, use sell quickly or be in high demand instead.
Your turn
The bakery made two hundred cinnamon buns this morning, and by ten o'clock nearly all of them had gone. They sold ___.
Show the answer
like hot cakes — The buns were going very fast, but a few were still left, so sold like hot cakes fits: it is about the speed of sales. Sold out would mean that none were left at all.
Write about a product or tickets that everyone rushed to buy. Say what it was and how quickly it all sold.
When the local band announced a reunion concert, the tickets sold like hot cakes and were gone within two hours.
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