Allison Robicelli makes some of the best cupcakes in New York. Can she and her husband also redefine the mom-and-pop for the Twitter age? “My storefront is your phone,” she says.
Allison Robicelli is, together with her husband, the founder of Robicelli’s, a much-lauded Brooklyn-based cupcake business. (Fanciful flavors have included “The Bellini,” “Creamsicle,” and “Lemon Blueberry Ricotta.”) Robicelli also recently signed a book deal with Penguin imprint Viking Studio for a baking book that will include a comic book portion, among other things.
The Robicelli's real innovation, however, is the almost paradoxical feat of having created a mom-and-pop business without actually owning a traditional physical store of their own. Instead, as wholesalers, they distribute to bakeries throughout New York, and make deliveries for private orders of over two dozen cupcakes. Nor do they own their own kitchen, instead renting one from a baker whose own business faltered in the economic downturn.
We caught up with Robicelli to talk about democratizing dessert, the virtual storefront, and whether or not the cupcake craze in which we find ourselves is a bubble.
FAST COMPANY: The other week I did a series on beef jerky innovation. This is dessert. What’s innovative about Robicelli’s?
ALLISON ROBICELLI: Well, we have over 200 flavors and going. We do not make a red velvet cupcake. We do not do food coloring. My husband Matt and I used to be pastry chefs at fancy restaurants, making luxurious desserts to round out $150 meals. Then at the end of the day of cooking for rich people, we’d go back to Brooklyn, and the food was terrible. Around the time Matt and I met, in 2005, a cupcake store opened and I thought, “What a great idea.” We had an old system of cake, where there were a limited number of cake-related days in life. I went to the shop and tried the cupcake, but it tasted like Styrofoam covered in asbestos. It’s a piece of cake! How do you screw up cake? You shouldn’t.
[Source: Fast Company]
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