Philadelphia cupcake truck Buttercream shut down by city

Big cupcake news from Philadelphia is that cupcake truck Buttercream had their truck taken away by the city. Stay tuned to @ButtercreamPhl on Twitter for the latest.



The story got as far as the Associated Press:

A kerfuffle over cupcakes in the City of Brotherly Love has dessert lovers sour on Philadelphia's confusing business regulations.

The Department of Licenses and Inspections seized a converted mail truck on Tuesday that's used by a woman known as "the cupcake lady," who roves the city selling 400-500 cupcakes a day.

The city says she did not have a proper permit to be running her small vending operation in the University City neighborhood, near the University of Pennsylvania. But the cupcake lady, Kate Carrara, a 35-year-old former lawyer, says the rules are just too confusing.

"It's just the laws," said Carrara, who paid $200 to get her truck out of the lot and was back selling cupcakes at a plaza near City Hall on Wednesday. "I've been trying to figure out where I can go and where I can't go."

Five days a week, she sell cupcakes downtown or nearby. She said she's tried to make sure she either has a permit or is outside of the zones where permits are needed.

But when she showed up in University City on Tuesday, Carrara said, city officials with badges were waiting for her. She thought she was just outside the zone where a permit was required, but the inspectors told her they had received complaints and that she wasn't allowed to operate there. They went through her cake-filled truck and promptly drove it to a lot.

The city said it warned Carrara several times that she was operating in areas where she needed a vending license. Inspectors advised her to either move or get one of the licenses, said Fran Burns, the city's Licenses and Inspections commissioner.




They're apparently back in business as of today:

Vanilla Vanilla. Banana Nutella. Chocolate Caramel Buttercream Pecans.

The Cupcake Truck was back in business today, serving up such flavors and half-dozen more, to a line of salivating citizens at JFK Plaza this morning.

Yesterday, Kate Carrara's converted postal truck was driven away by an L&I official, who claimed she pulled into a prohibited spot in University City, she recounted to a squad of reporters hungry for an update.

Her data-analyst husband, Andy, filled out a form and paid $200 to retrieve the vehicle, which still had hundreds of cupcakes in its fridge.

Such as Red Velvet. That's the best-seller, Kate Carrara said. And Chocolate Chocolate Ganache. "Absolutely delicious. Rich," said a waiting customer, Philadelphia web developer Georgia Spangenberg, 32, recommending a flavor she'd tried.

Comments

The Call Me Cupcake Truck has encountered similar problems in Philadelphia...while it is very difficult to decipher where we can and cannot park, we have managed to find a couple locations around University City. We've had to leave many Call Me Cupcake fans in Center City without their daily cupcake fix because the current laws prohibit us from being in Center City. Follow us on Twitter & Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/and-surrounding-area/Call-Me-Cupcake/131509010198288?__a=26
to findout where we are each day!