Crumbs Bake Shop — the world's largest cupcake company — is officially closing all of its stores as of Monday night, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Upon hearing the news, a Brooklyn-based Crumbs manager told the Wall Street Journal, "I come into work today, I'm happy, I'm skipping to work, and suddenly I don't have a job."
The news came just a few days after Crumbs was delisted from NASDAQ.
The once-hot bakery catapulted to fame thanks to a cupcake craze that swept across the U.S. in the early 2000s. Shortly after going public in 2011, however, Crumbs began losing money.
Three years after "Sex and the City" inspired a cupcake craze, Crumbs was born.
It all started in 2000 when character Carrie Bradshaw ate a cupcake from Magnolia Bakery's West Village location. Tourists began flocking there and a "Sex and the City" tour bus made the location a destination. The cupcake craze had officially begun.
Mia and Jason Bauer, respectively a legislative counsel and a consumer product entrepreneur, were quick to jump on the trend, opening the first Crumbs on the Upper West Side in 2003.
"My expectations were very simple, and they came to fruition immediately," Mia Bauer told New York Family in 2012. "The goal was to have a neighborhood bakery where I knew everybody and their kids, and I made all their birthday cakes."
Crumbs was a huge hit.
People went crazy for Crumbs' cupcakes, and the company was able to sell its gourmet product for as much as $4.50 a pop.
In an interview with Newsweek, Jason Bauer explained why the cupcakes were such a hit.
"If you rewind to 2002, cupcakes were vanilla, chocolate, lemon, or strawberry, maybe with sprinkles," he said. "When we opened our stores, Mia created three types of cupcakes with cool fillings, frostings, and decorations. Every day they sold out, so we decided to expand that line and continued to grow it. We started making gourmet cupcakes and [that’s] what has now become the industry standard."
Crumbs' cupcakes eventually came in more than 75 flavors and ranged from the 1-inch-tall "Taste" cupcake to the 6.5-inch-tall "Colossal," which could feed up to six people.
Next came a nationwide expansion.
Crumbs started opening more shops in New York and expanded to Philadelphia, D.C., and Beverly Hills, among other cities.
But at the same time, hundreds of other cupcake bakeries opened across the U.S. Among them were Sprinkles Cupcakes, which launched in 2005; Cupcake Nouveau in 2007; and Georgetown Cupcake in 2008.
As the cupcake craze ballooned, television networks began taking notice. The Food Network started airing "Cupcake Wars" and TLC launched "DC Cupcakes," a show about Georgetown Cupcake and its owners.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider