When I met Abrams in 2012 the company had seven American locations and four in the Middle East. âWe get three to five international franchise requests daily,â said Abrams, who opened the Dubai store in 2009 as a lark. âThat ratcheted us up just by being in that part of the world.â He saw potential everywhere, from Turkey and Japan, to Rwanda and, yes, even Paraguay. âWhen I go to Spain I might have sixty stores. Brazil could support twelve to twenty stores. Weâre probably looking at three hundred international stores in five years.⦠As much as America is disliked in many countries, our popular culture is overwhelming, and thatâs the culture that most of the world follows. Especially their middle class.â
Even though the cupcake trend began in rarefied, elite enclaves like the West Village and Beverly Hills, those were just the entry point to the mass market. âCupcakes are becoming more mainstream,â said an executive at Crumbs who didnât want to be named,who explained that the companyâs expansion plan was to target malls in the heart of America. âThose malls have more fluid shoppers. It definitely caters to a different type. Yes, it could be high end, but it also could be potential for people who want to buy an affordable cupcake who are not affluent, and thatâs a huge opportunity. You wouldnât compromise the quality of the product. Weâd maybe change the pricing of it and expect a higher volume.â
The elephant in the room is that at some point the mania for cupcakes will subside and the market wonât be able to support an increasing number of dedicated cupcakeries. The publicâs interest in the trend will move on to donuts, some say, or maybe a pie revival, and many cupcake shops will either close or branch out to serve more products. âI, too, wonder how sustainable it is,â said the Crumbs executive. âIs it a short-lived trend and something you can sustain and build a business out of this? We grapple with that as well. Itâs the million-dollar question.â Or, in Crumbâs case, a multimillion-dollar one.
The media had been calling the end of cupcake fever since the trend began. Joel Stein, writing in
Time
, called them a âsicknessâ in 2006, and
Vanity Fair
, in a 2009 essay on the epidemic of cute in America, likened eating cupcakes to sitting on your couch in a Snuggie while gazing at photos of kittens online (though cupcakes are still served at the
Vanity Fair
Oscar party). Business writers predicted the cupcake trend would implode as it grew, like Krispy Kreme donuts had a decade earlier. âIn America, bubbles form because any good business idea gets funded a dozen times over,â wrote Daniel Gross in
Slate
back in 2009. âThatâs the American way. Cupcakes are now showing every sign of going through the bubble cycle. The first-movers get buzz and revenues, gain critical mass, and start to expand rapidly. This inspires less-well-capitalized second- and third-movers, who believe thereâs room enough for them, and encourages established firms in a related industry to jump in.â The recession would right this, Gross predicted, as people traded down for more affordable options. Others searched for the ânext cupcake,â holding up whoopie pies, macarons, and cake pops as the rightful dessert salvation. Instead, the opposite happened. Cupcakes onlygrew further. The recession swelled the ranks of cupcake bakeries (led by newly unemployed professionals) and eaters. Cake pops and whoopie pies flashed in the pan. Each time someone predicted that cupcakes had jumped the shark, they were forced to eat their words as cupcakes rose to new heights.
Iâm not immune to cupcake fatigue. Where I was once excited about a cupcake shop opening in my neighborhood, I now shake my head and sigh when yet another pops up nearby. Two years ago I moved into a new house, and a few weeks
Learning to Kill: Stories