Sam, is it true that the Vietnamese know their way around a baguette because of the French? Maybe y’all shoulda tried the colonial life for a bit. 
Yes. Laos too. Wonderful bread in Vientiane. But Bangkok has greatly improved.
I’m glad I don’t really have a taste for sugary things. It seems like it would be pretty easy to spend a lot of money and get carried away with cakes.
There are dozens of special cupcake places around DC. I’ve had a few and they always seem to be normal cake with normal icing, the only difference being that they all have a ton of icing and the flavors (or the names anyway) are unusual. Or, the flavors WERE unusual. Now you can probably get an eggnog/Mojito cupcake at 7-11.
For his birthday we sent a dozen specialty cupcakes to my son in his dorm. Apparently a few were eaten, a few tasted and rejected and the rest grew old and were thrown away. 50 bucks wasted. If a dozen cupcakes can’t find a stomach to live in in a boy’s dorm, they must be all show and no taste.
I’m curious what you think a good price for a cupcake would be. $2 is cheap!
I seriously doubt that, and even if you could find gas station cupcakes, they’d be stale and not fresh. I say this not to pick on you but because people seem to hate the idea of the cupcake rather than actual cupcakes.
I’m sorry, your son has clearly been replaced by a Skrull. My condolences for your loss.
Ooh I’ve heard about Mighty Sweet Mini Pies, I want to try it.
You’re right that the fads are silly. When X item becomes a popular fad, there will be a lot of newer places that offer it, some some good, some bad, some gimmicky. After the fad dies down, the good ones will possibly stick around, the less good (or less well run) ones will close down.
I don’t think food trucks are a fad, they are just a different way to start up a business, one with less overhead. There are probably fads with types of food trucks, but I don’t think food trucks are dying out any time soon.
I’ve read about macarons being the next big trend. I don’t like them as much as cupcakes, but when done well they can be really good. The macaron place near River Oaks Theater is a bit expensive but really good.
I like the little bite size cupcakes. A lot of bakeries will have a lot of different and interesting flavors, and if they have little tiny cupcakes, you can try several different flavors instead of just having one normal size cupcake.
I agree. It’s beyond imagination for any free food to go uneaten in college dorms, unless the food was actually crawling with maggots or the college students were replaced by humanoid imposters.
Even then, I would expect them to organize a Friday-night maggot-eating contest.
radio had story about a candy company is trying to get some investors together to buy the crumby company.
While I agree that the frosting between cake layers is the way to go, it already exists as a product. We call it a whoopie pie.
What’s the difference between a pie store and, you know, a bakery? Just fewer things for sale?
Once you’ve been to a pie store, you always come back.
Cupcakes a fad? Next you’ll say bacon, or even bacon-topped cupcakes are a fad! Get the fuck out of here with that shit!
Yep, we had a Crumbs in my town, and now we don’t. As soon as it opened, I knew it would be a goner.
We may have a busy thriving downtown, but I just didn’t see that they would be able to sell enough expensive cupcakes, even at the height of the fad. They maybe could have capitalized on the dessert-after-a-restaurant-meal trade, but they weren’t open late enough, and the location wasn’t central enough. In fact, the location was weak overall.
Also, they didn’t have any tables to sit at. They had a high table with a few stools in front of the window, but no place you could comfortably sit and enjoy a cup of coffee and a cupcake with a friend. Did they expect to do all their business in take-out cupcakes?
Our Starbucks is always packed and Crumbs was empty. Crumbs could have siphoned off some of the dollars from the Starbucks trade, but the location and lack of tables prevented it from competing effectively. Maybe they didn’t want people hanging around the store? Well, I guess that’s no longer a concern since they’re closed.
We ended up with THREE downtown! One is already gone, and it was the one in what I would have thought was the best location. Our downtown could definitely support one self-serve yogurt place even after the fad fades. It’s a good concept. It can probably support two at the moment given the fad. Three was ridiculous.
I interviewed for a job once managing a cupcake shop about 2-3 years ago. I didn’t particularly care if I got the job, so I was being overly honest. At the end of the interview, they asked if I had any questions for them. I replied “so what’s the plan for when the cupcake fad ends?”
Dead silence. I thought it was a fair question.
It was a bizarre trend that filled a need that didn’t exist. Because no one ever just bought one cupcake; they bought a dozen. And, of course, if you need to feed a dozen people, there’s an invention called a “cake” that can fill your needs very nicely, at significantly less cost.
And there’s nothing “gourmet” about them unless you equate labor intensity with gourmet. They’re dry by design (by cooking them separately in cups, you’ve dramatically increased the amount of batter that touches metal), and to compensate they overload them with frosting. I can’t say I’ve ever met one that beats out a cake in terms of texture or taste, which to me trumps presentation.
I agree that donuts are the trend du jour. I have friends who own a donut shop and they are crazily busy. They even do a few weddings per month.
The vast majority of the cupcakes I buy were single purchases. The next most would be two cupcakes - one for me and one for the wife. I have bought a full dozen once.
I think the reason people don’t get cupcakes is they don’t understand how they’re eaten.
This place wasn’t even on my radar until I saw this thread. Then yesterday I saw an empty Crumbs kiosk at the mall – I’d never even noticed it before!
But I wouldn’t call the Cupcake Fad dead – there are still cupcake boutiques in Back Bay Boston, and in other New England cities like Portsmouth. But they aren’t huge extended franchises.
This doesn’t sound at all true. Why would you ever want to buy a dozen cupcakes unless you were bringing them to a party? If you’re buying for yourself, no one would buy a dozen.
I live in a pretty small suburb and we have FOUR currently, plus a Dairy Queen and a Marble Stone Creamery. The only thing they did was kill off the FIFTH, a TCBY.
Weirdly, three of the four have similar names: Cherry Berry, Orange Leaf and Lemon Tree.
We have one cupcake shop, but they also do event cakes and catering. The grocery stores, however, have started with the “gourmet” cupcakes in their bakeries.