Butch Bakery has been getting a LOT of buzz (like on Fox morning show this Thursday at 7 am) - not sure how much of it's deserved since I haven't tasted them yet myself, though personally it feels a wee bit gimmicky to my eyes, though perahps I'm cupcake jaded. It does prove that even in a cupcake-saturated city like New York, there's always room for another cupcake company as long as you have an original idea.
Here's the latest piece from FINS - I definitely want to give them a try when I get home, despite being (and enjoying being) a girl. Also a lesson here for everyone, that sometimes there is such a thing as too much buzz if your server's not ready for it! You can also follow them on Facebook and Twitter (@ButchBakery). They deliver to Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn but their site says they don't take phone orders, so see for yourself. I'll see what I can do about a taste test next week.
Just when things looked bleakest, Arrick found his calling. Strolling around one day in the West Village, a neighborhood in downtown Manhattan, Arrick spied people lining up around the corner for Magnolia Bakery's cupcakes. This piqued his interest in the business.
And then, reading an article about cupcakes shortly after, he found himself disgusted when the writer called them "pink and magical."
"Why did cupcakes need to be magical? They're not magical for me. Where's the masculine aesthetic?" Arrick said. "We needed to butch it up, buttercup." And so Butch Bakery, an online delivery "masculine" cupcakery was born.
The bakery sells the usual fare, but with a twist. It offers flavors like kahlua-soaked vanilla cake with Bailey's Bavarian cream, brandy-soaked lemon cake with orange-infused chocolate ganache filling, and chocolate and beer-infused cake with beer buttercream. Not every cupcake is drenched in alcohol: Butch Bakery offers caramel cake with salted caramel filling; and maple cake with milk chocolate ganache and crumbled bacon.
Right now, Arrick has a staff of five, including the baker. He runs the operation out of a commercial kitchen space in Queens. There's no storefront yet, but he hopes to open a store downtown in Manhattan this spring.
Since December, when he opened for business, Arrick has filled some 1,000 orders. But when DailyCandy, a New York-based e-mail event guide, profiled Butch Bakery two days before Valentine's Day, business skyrocketed. The website crashed after it got 600,000 hits, and orders have been backlogged for weeks (the next available delivery is after March 1).
"We had 400 phone calls, 400 e-mails, it was like the Oprah effect," Arrick said.
Here's the latest piece from FINS - I definitely want to give them a try when I get home, despite being (and enjoying being) a girl. Also a lesson here for everyone, that sometimes there is such a thing as too much buzz if your server's not ready for it! You can also follow them on Facebook and Twitter (@ButchBakery). They deliver to Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn but their site says they don't take phone orders, so see for yourself. I'll see what I can do about a taste test next week.
Just when things looked bleakest, Arrick found his calling. Strolling around one day in the West Village, a neighborhood in downtown Manhattan, Arrick spied people lining up around the corner for Magnolia Bakery's cupcakes. This piqued his interest in the business.
And then, reading an article about cupcakes shortly after, he found himself disgusted when the writer called them "pink and magical."
"Why did cupcakes need to be magical? They're not magical for me. Where's the masculine aesthetic?" Arrick said. "We needed to butch it up, buttercup." And so Butch Bakery, an online delivery "masculine" cupcakery was born.
The bakery sells the usual fare, but with a twist. It offers flavors like kahlua-soaked vanilla cake with Bailey's Bavarian cream, brandy-soaked lemon cake with orange-infused chocolate ganache filling, and chocolate and beer-infused cake with beer buttercream. Not every cupcake is drenched in alcohol: Butch Bakery offers caramel cake with salted caramel filling; and maple cake with milk chocolate ganache and crumbled bacon.
Right now, Arrick has a staff of five, including the baker. He runs the operation out of a commercial kitchen space in Queens. There's no storefront yet, but he hopes to open a store downtown in Manhattan this spring.
Since December, when he opened for business, Arrick has filled some 1,000 orders. But when DailyCandy, a New York-based e-mail event guide, profiled Butch Bakery two days before Valentine's Day, business skyrocketed. The website crashed after it got 600,000 hits, and orders have been backlogged for weeks (the next available delivery is after March 1).
"We had 400 phone calls, 400 e-mails, it was like the Oprah effect," Arrick said.
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