It has been just over 6 years since Jody Hall opened up her business, Cupcake Royale, states The Seattle Times. Since then cupcake craze has grown to include many more bakeries that also specialize in these tasty little bites of goodness.
Nowadays, with everyone clamoring for cupcakes, it seems almost incomprehensible that Hall’s friends thought she was insane when she wrote her business plan for Cupcake Royale & Vérité Coffee back in 2003.
“Of course they did, because outside of New York City, there was no such thing as a cupcake bakery,” she says.
But after graduating from Seattle University with a marketing degree in business, followed by 11 years at Starbucks in both marketing and operations, she felt ready to follow her instincts.
“I saw many great ideas and concepts get ‘vanilla-fied’ after going through the corporate process,” she says. “I had a concept of my own that I knew would work, and I had a strong desire to reconnect with the community and get out from behind the cube wall.”
Today, it seems like we’ve got cupcakes on practically every corner from Bellevue to Belltown.
Hall is gracious about her cupcake competitors, referring to them as “friends.” She claims that because each has a niche that’s very different from hers, “it seems to work out just fine.”
Apparently so. With four locations, an expanding wholesale business (clients include Metropolitan Market and coffee shops such as Vivace and Zeitgeist) and online service, Cupcake Royale is booming. But what sets Hall’s business apart – and, in 2009, earned her the Mayor’s Small Business Award, Deanna Knudson Grassroots Leadership Award and Seattle’s Best Local Crusader – is the savvy way she merges a successful small-business model with strong political beliefs.
Screenshot from Cupcake Royale