Pondering the Three Dollar Cupcake

I had a craving for a cupcake today, so I popped over to this cute little shop that just opened in a shopping center near the winery. My frosted treat was adorable, but it set me back $3.25. (Yikes!) It did come in a cute little box with a sticker and a little window in it, nestled in a specially-designed cardboard holder. And it had a tiny white-chocolate bunny on top. It was packaged for me by an adorable little blond teenager wearing a pink retro waitress blouse. All very cute.

The shop, Gigi's, might be a franchise location of this Gigi's in Nashville, TN. I chose their franchise page to link to, because it says that they are ""Passionate"" (Yes, that's italicized, quoted AND capitalized. They really mean it. I love decorative punctuation.) about "using the freshest ingredients to make the best cupcakes you can find anywhere". I have to say, it was a damn good cupcake. (Seems like the Napa store is better at making the icing not look like fat coils of goo, as on their cupcake menu page, so maybe they aren't related.)

The first time I walked into the little pink cupcake shop in Napa, the thing that struck me was how cute it was. Just precious. Pink and scalloped and lacy everywhere. However, the woman behind the register, who appeared to be the owner, looked like she'd just received a life sentence. Someone who wears pink and sells cupcakes for a living should be perky, right? (Like this person, maybe?) Cupcakes are fun. Totally and completely trendy right now, but still fun. I bought three different flavors, one for each person at dinner that night. I gushed about the pinkness and the cuteness of everything. I would have been fondant in their hands.

So the precious little pre-folded, cellophane-windowed box with the pink sticker that holds the cupcakes has four holes. If you were a cupcake seller, would you not at least suggest that the purchaser might like to pick one more, since the box holds four? Ok, yeah, they are $3.25 a pop, but if you're in there with an almost full box anyway, you're already on the Adorable Pink Cupcake Love Boat and you're not going to quibble with Isaac about one more cocktail. I don't think I got a single smile during the whole process, even after I reconsidered and walked back in to purchase the fourth cupcake.

Today, by contrast, a sweet fair-haired teenager in a prim pink blouse was at the counter. Ok, good job owner, recognize what you don't do well and don't do it. The girl was as nice as could be, and even offered to sell me a milk with my vanilla cupcake.

Afterwards, I walked around the corner to the grocery store to buy myself a milk and passed by the 4H bake sale, where they were selling beautiful homemade cakes and cookies. I thought about the fancy cupcake in my car, which was starting to seem a little small. How can the three-dollar-cupcake business model work in Brown's Valley? They have to be the greatest, most delicious cupcakes ever, and someone has to work very hard to promote them. They should have an email sign up so that I can be advised of the cupcake of the week, or of office birthday specials, and of course they should have a cupcake stamp card (buy 11, get one free?). They should be selling their little cupcake hearts out.

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I just said cupcake too many times and my sugar-laced brain short-circuited.

So that's the thing. I'm complaining about how expensive this thing was, but I'm still thinking about it. It was delicious. In the end, I was glad it wasn't any bigger, because I had to eat it in big bites while washing it down with a carton of milk as people started to arrive. But was it worth three dollars and twenty-five cents? And will expensive cupcakes really fly in the proudly non-fancy Brown's Valley area of Napa? We shall see.