Sprinkles Cupcakes

Sprinkles Cupcakes is a Beverly Hills, California-based cupcake bakery chain established in 2005. It is considered one of the first cupcake bakeries.

In 2002, Candace Nelson and her husband Charles Nelson, both investment bankers, visited Candace's sister in New York and tried the cupcakes at Magnolia Bakery. Candace decided that it was "time for cupcakes to stop being the backup dancer to cakes." Having had started a custom cake business after attending Tante Marie's Pastry Program in San Francisco, she set her sights on cupcakes. "I was taking orders for special occasion cakes which I came to realize are, by definition, reserved for special, infrequent occasions," she said. "I wanted to create an artful and handcrafted dessert, yet one which people could eat on a daily basis...which led me to reinvent and elevate the lowly cupcake."

Although starting a cupcake bakery was a "high-risk venture" and the bakery business was in a four-year no carb decline, the Nelsons pursued their dream. Their "sleek, minimalistic" store was designed by an architect from Vienna and the logo and packaging were created by a former Martha Stewart employee with design help from graphic designers Kevin Hagen and David Irvin. On April 13, 2005,the Nelsons opened Sprinkles' first store on Little Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills. The first day, the cupcakes sold out in three hours, and 2,000 cupcakes were sold the first week.

Sprinkles now has 17 locations throughout the United States (Beverly Hills, Chicago, Dallas, Georgetown, The Grove, Downtown Los Angeles' FIGat7th, Houston, La Jolla, New York City, Palo Alto, Scottsdale, Las Vegas, Atlanta,and Newport Beach), with plans to open in 15 more cities including London and Tokyo. The Nelsons also started a traveling "Sprinklesmobile", a Mercedes Sprinter van designed by Sprinkles architect Andrea Lenardin and built by "Pimp My Ride's" West Coast Customs. In 2007 the company developed a line of cupcake mixes sold exclusively through Sprinkles and Williams-Sonoma stores in the United States and Canada. In February 2011 Sprinkles released an iPhone app that features free cupcakes and virtual gifting.

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