Just about five years ago on this very blog, I called peak cupcake and announced the age of pie. Finally, the world is catching up. You can scoff at me five years ago, but behold the WSJ delivering the truth earlier this month:
But the popularity of high-end cupcakes—embodied by chains such as New York’s Magnolia Bakery and Los Angeles-based Sprinkles—has waned in recent years, even as new players crowded into the field. Crumbs posted a loss of $18.2 million last year, layered on a loss of $10.3 million in 2012, according to securities filings. Its cash on hand fell to $893,000 at the end of 2013, down from $6.3 million the prior year.
If you hadn’t caught the headline, Crumbs global cupcake empire was reduced to its namesake particles as it was delisted from the NASDAQ and closed all its stores. As of this writing, nobody told their webmaster that cupcakes are over.
Really, when you think back on it, end-of-days pastry like the cronut should have tipped us off.
Peak cupcake?? I hope you’re right. Now that Hostess is back in the business of baking, ahem, “cupcakes,” we face-stuffin’, coco-jonesin’ lard-asses can get back to what we do best, guilt (and trend) free: ingesting large quantities of gut-busing plasticine pastries