[joezydeco]

A client of mine manufactures frozen yogurt machines. They're making money hand-over-fist right now with the explosion of these new DIY frozen yogurt shops. Mostly because these shops purchase a multiple of machines as opposed to a Dairy Queen that gets by with one.

But the client is convinced that this expansion will end soon. My town alone has 5 or 6 of them (with 2 more slated to open this year) and there's just no way even a town of my size (pop. 50,000) can sustain it.

[PaulHoule]

Frogurt's got that bubble feeling, but unlike cupcakes, it actually "crossed the chasm" into the flyover cities where most Americans live.

I definitely see cupcake shops at chi-chi spots in NYC, LA and SF but I've never seen one in a city with < 1M population or in a rural or posturban area.

[joezydeco]

My data matches FigBug's. Cupcakes are definitely in flyover states. They're just smaller mom-and-pop stores and trucks showing up.

Don't forget that there's also a weekly TV show ("Cupcake Wars") giving the trend a lot of exposure.

[FigBug]

My city of 350,000 has 9 cup cake shops. I can't see how it will last.

[VLM]

You might be surprised. Lets say you have to haul in $1K/day to pay labor and rent and just minimally keep open. Sounds like a miserable way to earn a kilobuck, but if you get $5/customer and there's 365 days per year you need: 1000 / 5 * 365 = 74 thousand customer visits per year. So roughly 350K citizens / about 10 shops = 35 thousand customers per shop. That means every citizen needs to visit a mere twice per year. My guess is its more like 1 in 20 are hardcore carb/sugar addicts who visit every week and pig out.

Now a kilobuck a day isn't going to earn you a private island retirement. That's for a hole in the wall in a cruddy area not a giant palace right off the interstate and barely keeping in business and paying the bills. But it is theoretically survivable.

WRT the fad itself disappearing, most small businesses collapse and are replaced by other small businesses so in the long run they'll all eventually disappear, to be replaced with the next new fad at about the same financial and survival stats.

Its been interesting watching financial changes in my town since the housing bubble popped, before the pop the purpose of a small business was to separate a sucker from his home equity loan money, so the landlords didn't care about infrastructure or parking, etc, but suddenly now that the amateurs are gone from the market, once again CRE actually needs to appeal to be rented, parking is not an option anymore, etc.

[pnathan]

There's one in Pullman, WA. 30K, surrounded by fifty miles of wheat farms (oh, and has a university). It's probably spillover from the Seattle cultural thing, but hey, I appreciate it.

[bmj]

Pittsburgh has never seen a cupcake chain, but several locally-owned shops have opened in the last five to ten years. There has been some contraction in that market, though--I believe several of the businesses have been shuttered in the last year or so.

The remaining shop (which has several shops in the city, still) will likely survive, but they've also pivoted a bit by selling other things, too.

[bluedino]

We're < 50,000 people and have at least 2 cupcake shops.

[theorique]

Saw a cupcake truck on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago last weekend. (-> large city, dense area)

[danielna]

There's an unbelievably popular froyo franchise in Northern VA called Sweet Frog[1] that markets effectively enough to stand out among seemingly a zillion competitors. They have a religious angle (Frog standing for "Fully Rely on God"), frog mascots that make local community appearances, merchandising that young kids actively wear, and are cheaper per ounce than competitors while offering unlimited toppings.

I was always skeptical of cupcakes because they were (1) annoyingly expensive and (2) blatantly unhealthy, but SF seems to have addressed both of those concerns.

[1] http://adage.com/article/news/crowded-fro-yo-pond-sweet-frog...

[joezydeco]

I've seen many a kid go nuts on the self-serve yogurt machine and topping buffet, turning a small cup of a somewhat healthy dessert into a $7 pile of M&Ms, gummy bears, and other calorie-laden toppings. There's a reason they charge by weight.