“This is a famous cupcake place in New York City. It just came here,” the woman tells the three young boys eating baked goods with her.
They’re at Magnolia Bakery and “here” is Salt Lake City, where the first domestic franchise opened in June.
More accurately, this Utah bakery is the first stateside Magnolia marketed as a franchise. The LaGuardia Airport kiosk is technically a franchise.
The first Salt Lake City franchise is located in Aspire at Holladay Hills, a master-planned, mixed-use development 10 miles south of the city center. With this ribbon-cutting, Magnolia enters its domestic franchising era in earnest.
The Salt Lake City franchisee is set to open a second store in the next months, while the Louisville, Kentucky, franchisee readies for an August opening.
Magnolia has signed 18 domestic franchise agreements to date. Each franchisee will open three to five bakeries within three years. This year, nine franchises are expected to open.
Make no mistake: This is big. At present, there are 12 company-owned stores in New York, L.A., and Chicago. Franchisees will open between 54 and 90 new stores in the coming years. Where there is a Main Street, there may be a Magnolia.
This holds true even if the street leads to an improbable destination, such as the Mountain West foothills.
It is here where dozens of customers got a first taste of the Salt Lake City Magnolia during the June 1 opening.
Katie Nolan, Magnolia’s domestic franchise sales manager, spent opening day “watching people line up out the door the whole day, eager to be part of the experience.”
Joining Nolan were CEO Nathan Louer, Chief Brand and Baking Officer Bobbie Lloyd, and other corporate officials and franchisees.
“It was amazing to see how deeply loved this brand is, even in a market so far from our core roots,” Nolan wrote. “The energy, excitement, and community support far exceeded my expectations and made this milestone even more special.”
Many attendees were friends and family of the franchise owners, Kirk Schneider and Daniel Claflin. Schneider was the longtime owner of Nate Wade Subaru, which employed his son-in-law, Claflin.
Wade, Schneider’s late father-in-law, was selling used cars in Salt Lake City when Subaru approached him and his former business partner to open the first U.S. dealership in 1968. Wade was the sole proprietor by the time Schneider began working there in 1985. Schneider assumed ownership about a decade later and sold the dealership in 2022.
Schneider’s daughters and their husbands were among the family members employed by the dealership, which maintained a long history of community donations. Through the decades, it supported charities aiding veterans, cancer patients, ill children, and pet adoption programs.
The family’s network of connections amassed in force on opening day. With robust demand for pudding, baked goods, and cookbooks, Salt Lake City had the highest gross sales of domestic stores companywide on June 1, said Claflin.
Their second store in Foothill Village displays a “coming soon” banner and is expected to open in the fall.
This wasn’t part of the plan. Franchising, yes. Salt Lake City, not forecast. But then the winds changed.
Schneider and his wife, Nata, met Magnolia’s Lloyd and her husband on an organized bike trip in Ireland in 2024. In the process of being introduced, Kirk told Lloyd about his history with Magnolia. Before the Schneiders married, Nata lived in New York. When Kirk visited her, he’d arrive with Magnolia pudding. The pudding apparently sealed the matrimonial deal. As Lloyd recalled, Kirk told the travelers, “I don’t think my wife would have married me if it wasn’t for the banana pudding.”
Having sold the car dealership, Schneider was open to a new project. He expressed interest in Magnolia and maintained communication with New York. Executives had the East Coast in mind for the first franchises. They were sufficiently impressed with Schneider and Claflin to shift gears and steer west.
Next thing they knew, Schneider and Claflin were trainees in branded aprons. They spent time in New York learning every aspect of the operation.
Franchise administrator Dina Veenhuis described “this quiet moment between one of our new franchisees, Abdullah Farid, and our first franchisees, Kirk Schneider and Daniel Claflin. Abdullah was just getting to know the brand and touring our bakeries, while Kirk and Daniel were training in our [Upper West Side] bakery, learning frosting techniques and already beginning to share what they’d learned. This is what a franchise community looks like.”
Farid is a co-owner of forthcoming franchises in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.
To the millions who associate Magnolia with New York, this image is unbelievable.
On first glance, the Magnolia logo has no business in these surroundings. Deeper consideration of the cultural context rationalizes the sight/site.
The people of Utah eat copious sweets. Those who strictly follow Mormon doctrine don’t consume coffee, alcohol, or tobacco, so they sugar up instead. It’s no coincidence that dirty soda and Crumbl cookies are thriving in the Beehive State.
“Removing these vices from Mormon culture creates a cookie-sized hole and what fills the void is sugar,” said culture critic Alyssa Grenfell in a video entitled “How Mormon Doctrine Created Crumbl Cookie.”
Grenfell continued, “Whenever your mind goes to, I want a drink, I want a cocktail, I want a coffee, I want a vape, the Mormon mind goes to sugar.”
As Crumbl co-founder Sawyer Hemsley told Forbes, “We knew that Utah was very bakery-driven—it’s the Mormon culture. We have our fair share of vices, but they’re not necessarily drugs or alcohol. It’s sugar and soda. We’re used to sharing baked goods with our neighbors.”
Dirty soda and baked goods make appearances in the new TV show that has captured the popular imagination, the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Launched in 2024, the Hulu program is a reality show about young mothers in Salt Lake City. A ratings juggernaut, its third season debuted as Hulu’s most watched show, according to New York magazine.
The show first made headlines as a national curiosity about an insular religion. One star sensationalized the matter when she was arrested and dropped as The Bachelorette this year.
Factor in the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, tradwifery, and the high concentration of social-media personalities from Utah, and what emerges is a complex cultural dynamic.
“To a degree not seen since Mitt Romney’s presidential bid, or the smash hit musical The Book of Mormon, it seems like Mormons are having a moment,” wrote Made by History contributor Mallory Hutchings-Tryon. “But notably, this moment belongs to Mormon women.
“Most Americans know very little about Mormon women, and what is known is often based on sensational stories about narrowly circumscribed gender roles and stereotypes about polygamy. The women of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives challenge these assumptions, projecting an image of influence, ambition, and agency that sits uneasily alongside popular assumptions about Mormon womanhood. As SLOMW reflects, there have been times in Mormon history when women have exercised substantial power and influence, often drawing on core doctrines that emphasize equality. Yet, Mormon women have also seen their opportunities revoked or diminished in tandem with political and cultural moments in the U.S. at large.”
In “Why the time is ripe for Mormon mania,” writer Juliana Kaplan argued, “[S]ocial media and reality TV can’t represent an entire religion, but the small window they provide into the culture has an undeniable appeal. The curated aesthetics, tight-knit families, and entrepreneurial spirit that shine through our screens are scratching an itch for lonely, sober-curious, and economically anxious young Americans.”
In season 2, episode 7, the Secret Lives women hold the Great Mormon Bakeoff. Grenfell, the Crumbl commentator, likened this to the wine-mom trope. “I always think that Mormon moms who are making baked goods all the time is like the Mormon version of a wine mom because the wine moms love their wine and the Mormon wine moms love their baked goods,” Grenfell said.
Why discuss a TV show in a report on a bakery? What does Magnolia have to do with pop culture? Everything.
Magnolia has the capacity to franchise today because a TV show made it famous more than 25 years ago. When Magnolia cupcakes appeared on Sex and the City in 2000, it was a big-bang moment that turned Magnolia and its cupcakes into instant celebrities. Cupcakes were the in-demand fashion accessory of the early aughts.
In “25 Years of N.Y.C. Dining,” the New York Times highlights “major food moments … that changed life in New York City in the first quarter of the 21st century.” Magnolia cupcakes are the first entry in the timeline, published in the May 28, 2025 print edition. Of all the imagery that could have been chosen for the front-page teaser, it is Magnolia cupcakes that are pictured.
Today, many consumers know that Magnolia is a popular bakery. Fewer appreciate that it became world-famous by way of its cupcakes on a TV show.
Consider the cupcake as an actor that made its screen debut in 2000. From its cameo on Sex and the City, it rose to fame as an A-lister, with memorable roles on Saturday Night Live and a handful of blockbuster movies. Magnolia and its cupcakes were popularized through the entertainment media. They are creations of pop culture.
Their legacy continues to resonate with younger lifestyle consumers. Countless followers of Pure Wow were too young to watch adult TV in 2000. Nonetheless, the Sex and the City cupcake scene was positioned first in this January 2025 post.
On Location Tours, which has been running its Sex and the City tour since 2001, tells Curbed it’s seeing increased interest from 20somethings.
When the bus tourists enter Magnolia, they find that banana pudding is now the main commodity. Gone is this faded picture that once hung inside the original Magnolia in the West Village.
The scene is no longer displayed, but its impact is indelible. “It’s a lot of attention to hang on a 30-second appearance from 24 years ago, but it’s been continuous,” wrote Curbed in a 2024 story.
The aftershocks are reverberating to places like Salt Lake City. The brand’s power can be transplanted to distant cities. The brand’s power originated with a cupcake.