Making Cupcakes, Making Jobs
By jpower on Monday, January 25th, 2010As the recession stretches on and jobs stay hard to find, more people are turning to self-employment to pay the bills. The name of the game is to use your pre-existing skills in a venture with a low start-up cost. Like, say, using your many years of cupcake-baking experience to start a business selling cupcakes.
Carrie Spindler of Hudson County, New Jersey did just that when she started GoodieBox Bakeshop. After losing her job, Spindler decided to take the leap and put her fifteen years of baking experience to entrepreneurial use. Spindler started her business online and created a dedicated following (especially for her signature red velvet cupcakes) before moving into her own retail space.
Mini Empire Bakery of Seattle, Washington 
has much the same business plan. Christy Beaver and Morgan Greenseth started their cupcakes and more concern online this last December and have just started selling their goods in local cafes as well. Just as Spindler did with GoodieBox, Beaver and Greenseth plan on building a following before setting up a brick and mortar shop.
Besides the relative ease and low-cost of starting up an online catering company, these cupcake entrepreneurs have one more thing on their side: the robustness of the small luxuries market. While many of us can no longer afford big luxuries, we still have money for little luxuries like cupcakes. Thus cupcake-making is a potential source of jobs as well as sweetness, even in tough economic times like these.