The Cupcake Bubble
By jpower on Thursday, January 28th, 2010
In my search for quality cupcake news, I’m keep seeing one word: trendy. As with every trend, two questions come to mind:”When will the bubble burst?” and “Is all this hoopla a good thing?”
Though cupcakes have moved past the “indy cool” stage, the trend is only just going mainstream and cupcakeries are still popping up all across the country. You’d think this would be a bonanza for cupcake fans, but in reality it’s a mixed bag.
At All Things Cupcake you can see the best side of this trend: great recipes, lots of creative ideas, and many entrepreneurs making a go of it, even in a poor economy. However, both Carmelized OpiNIONS and Kat with a K have posts this week about the downside of the cupcake bubble: overpriced product, inferior quality, and the annoying fact that cupcake have been co-opted for the purposes of conspicuous consumption.
The good thing is that all trends pass. The bursting of the cupcake bubble , whenever it happens, will have the effect of winnowing out cupcakeries- while many will go out of business, those with the best recipes and sound business plans will survive. In the meantime, I hope that talented bakers everywhere will use this opportunity to raise some capital and that cupcake hobbyists will have a lot of fun reading all the press.