Two leading cupcake bakers are filling their ovens with pies nowadays.
Gigi Butler left the cupcake business entirely and opened Pies by Gigi in her home state of Tennessee this year. Butler founded Gigi’s Cupcakes in Nashville in 2008. Once operating more than 100 stores, it was the largest cupcake chain in the country for a time. Butler sold the corporation in 2016 but maintained ownership of her original Nashville store until February 2020, when she sold it to concentrate on pies.
“I might have started a cupcake shop, but anyone who really knows me knows that my true love is baking pies,” Butler wrote in a 2012 journal entry foreshadowing the pie business.
Candace Nelson continues to own Sprinkles Cupcakes. A few years ago, she entered the pie scene by way of pizza pies. Her neo-Neapolitan Pizzana immediately impressed the critics. True to the pre-election October surprise, Nelson announced a pie class. “For the very first time, I’ll be opening my kitchen to share these Fall traditions with you!” Nelson writes in her Oct. 1 announcement.
Nelson reflected on the experience in an essay entitled What Happens When a Successful Entrepreneur Fails to Follow Her Own Advice?
Though best known for its cupcakes, Baked & Wired here in D.C. takes its pies seriously and receives hundreds of holiday orders.
The cupcake-to-pie pivot is something of a thing.
Andrea Adleman | Cupcakologist 