Crumbs, a bakery chain that started on the Upper West Side in 2003 and rode the cupcake boom to profits, has closed its doors for good, shutting its remaining 48 stores on Monday. Its remaining UWS stores were on Amsterdam and 76th street and Columbus and 97th.
The company, which was started by Jason and Mia Bauer and went public in 2011, had been burning through cash and posting losses, according to the Wall Street Journal. It closed one of its local locations a few months ago.
So, is this the actual end of the cupcake boom?
It appears that these employees received no notice. How unfortunate.
So, are the fro-yo places next?
It went from a source of wonderfully fresh tasty cupcake creations to a store where the cupcakes were stale, the counter people did not make eye contact and argued with you over the fact that take-out cupcakes were not subject to NYS/NYC sales tax. (Look it up – it is a specific exception in the NYS/NYC tax code.). It was good while it lasted but as Saul Berenson [Homeland] said, “When it’s over, it’s over”. (Fun fact – Mandy Patinkin – who plays the character Saul was a W90th UWS resident for many years – worked out at Equinox 92 regularly).
What a sad, sad day, they really messed up their expansion. Will they re-open the profitable stores at some point (which I assume would include the two on the uws)?
Just not enough UWS-ers who are eating oversized cupcakes and cookies these days. Too bad though. Always sad to see a new business close.
Does this mean less obesity on the UWS?
Can we hope for the same fate to the froyo shops popping up everywhere?
It was also a place you could go for a cup of coffee, which wasn’t mobbed like Starbucks (although they had been featuring Starbucks coffee). Of course that wouldn’t have kept them in business.
There also was one on Broadway around 109th St.
Emphasis on “was”. The one btw 108th and 109th closed about a month or so ago, and I thought I’d read long before (either here or maybe the Columbia paper) that it was month-to-month on its lease while the landlord looked for anther tenant.
Time to head to Filicori Zecchini. The construction guys are buzzing away at the 95th & Broadway location and it looks like they are just a few weeks away from opening.
The Bauer’s were very smart to sell out when they did! Very sad to see Crumbs go out of business!!
Alan —
That depends. Going public was probably a good idea — but it all depends on how much equity they still had in the company. Then again, who knows, maybe they’ll find a distressed/turnaround investor (they are all flush with cash and looking for deals) and find a way to resurrect the brand.
The boom isn’t over… there are a few Cupcake “ATM”s on the Eastside. Don’t understand the boom anyway.
The cupcakes were overy sweet. Does anyone remember their short lived partnership with one of those television competition chefs? Greed is what killed this chain. Bring back the Bagel Nosh.
OVERLY SWEET
Not the healthiest business in the world, that’s for sure. Where was the original Crumbs shop located in the UWS?
It was located on the east side of Amsterdam at 75th, in what I believe is now a florist shop (I think it was the shop next door to 16 Handles or one down from there). It used to have the best crumb cake, which they apparently stopped making as the cupcakes took over.
That flower shop is long gone. The spot is a Subway sandwich shoppe.
Too bad people lost their jobs overnight with no notice, and so much for “local” business people taking care of their employees and being good for the neighborhood.
These greed-heads are lucky they cashed out long ago, now its everyone else’s problem. But the place was emblematic of everything that the UWS and Manhattan is becoming; over bloated, overpriced, too sweet, faux-gourmet, over-designed concepts that have no concept about how to sustain a local business or build a loyal following.
Every new concept is like a popup store, a disposable item like the products they sell. At least McDonalds throws away the stale coffee and food the second the timer goes off.
These people proved they didn’t care about their business or their customers, just the money. They actually thought they could sell stale overpriced 800 calorie cupcakes? And be a publicly traded company? Next!
The worst cupcake I ever had was a Crumb’s cupcake. I first heard of Crumb’s after seeing one of their bake shops appear on “The Apprentice” TV show. I purchased one of their “Apple Cobbler” cupcakes for $3.50. The frosting to cupcake ratio was 3 inches of frosting on top of a 2 inch high cupcake. I scraped off and discarded most the frosting to get to the cupcake. It was very dry and just crumbled. It was stale. It did not taste like apple, it looked like they added 2 tiny pieces of apple to vanilla cake mix. The bakery area inside Whole Foods sells better & cheaper cupcakes.
Good article in Bloomberg today about this.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-08/crumbs-downfall-shows-limits-of-american-cupcake-addiction-1-.html
CNBC has reported this morning that Marcus Lemonis (“The Profit”) and a partner are in discussions to potentially purchase Crumbs and combine it with some other holdings (Dipping Dots and a Key Lime Pie concern, among others) to keep the name open with diversified offerings.
Personally, I was a big fan of Crumbs and would love to see them return, although I’ll admit to being only an occasional customer since I don’t want to have to wear pants with an extendable waistband (high calories and high prices were noted as just a few of the reasons for their fairly sudden demise, it seems). IMHO, much better than Magnolia’s fairly small and plain cupcakes that are nothing more than a vehicle for frosting, and Melissa’s, which are basically overpriced cookies with a flared bottom.
Bottom line really is that uni-taskers will always profile as a fad. Lemonis has the breadth, spectacular acumen, and resources to make Crumbs bigger, better, and profitable.
I haven’t touched a cupcake in 20 years and would pass out from sugar shock if I were to eat a few bites. That said, UWS obesity? Have you people been out of Manhattan recently, like to a rest stop on the Jersey turnpike? One problem we do not have relative to the rest of the country, especially among those who can afford to regularly buy from Crumbs, is obesity. I will miss their not-Starbucks coffee.