photo by Tiffany Brown for The Las Vegas Sun
That's just one of the interesting nuggets of cupcake info you'll find in this Las Vegas Sun profile of Pamela Jenkins and The Cupcakery, which now operates 2 Las Vegas bakeries and one outside of Dallas in Frisco, Texas. Click through to read the whole thing and watch the video portion of the piece and to read about celebs, erotic cupcakes, and more. I know this certainly makes me want to head to Vegas, a city I already like (in small doses).
If you need a favor in this town, you’d better show up with a dozen cupcakes.
“People tell me they’re the best bribery in the world,” says Pamela Jenkins, the 27-year-old founder of the Cupcakery, a Henderson boutique bakery that supplies fresh-baked bribes and frosted kickbacks to celebrities, judges, pharmaceutical reps, and you and me.
“We’ve got attorneys that send them to all the judges. And the pharmaceutical reps come in and tell us we’ve created monsters out of these medical receptionists and doctors. They’re like, ‘We’re not giving out your samples of Zoloft unless you bring us some cupcakes.’ We even get requests to draw purple pills on top of the cupcakes.”
The Cupcakery opened 2 1/2 years ago and created a niche market for its luxury product. Today Jenkins sells more than 2,000 per day out of a tiny Henderson storefront next door to a sports nutrition shop. There’s also a Summerlin store, and last month the Cupcakery opened its third location, outside Dallas. Business has been so good that a batch of cupcake competitors — Retro Bakery, Mad Hatter Bakery and Cupcake Lane — have appeared on the scene, hoping for a piece of the pie.
Jenkins’ cupcake customers have included Britney Spears, Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz (he loves the red velvet cupcake, the shop’s biggest-selling item), Fergie, Quentin Tarantino, rocker Vince Neil, NBA All-Star Chris Webber and Palms co-owner George Maloof, one of her biggest customers.
photo of Pamela Jenkins by Tiffany Brown
I also loved this part:
“We do a lot of Elvis cupcakes. And Bob Marley is real popular. We’ve got a big stoner clientele,” Jenkins says. “And people love glitter in Vegas. They’ll say, ‘The more glitter you can put on ’em the better. We want ’em extra sparkly!’ ”...
The Cupcakery gets lots of casino business, and the hotel concierges have the bakery on speed dial for special-order late-night deliveries. They’ve done birthday parties for Celine Dion and Toni Braxton. Bette Midler sent them as thank-you gifts to her crew and dancers, with her autograph on them. “And Vince Neil and his wife are our total rock star clients,” Jenkins says. “She would buy them — $30 a dozen cupcakes — for their dogs!”
photo of The Cupcaker's Lemon Berry and Red Velvet cupakes by Flickr user Jill - Glossy Veneer
Comments
The cupcakes were great - boston creme pie, peanut butter chocolate cup, carrot cake and red velvet.
They weren't as sugary sweet as Sprinkles. I liked that.