As Cranbury Ice Thaws, Village Cupcake Brings Icing

We’re not very far into 2011, but Village Cupcakes has already become quite the presence in Cranbury.

Local moms and businesswomen Debbie Driscoll and Anne Marie Gibson, both 40, got to work early in the new year selling gourmet cupcakes through Teddy’s on Main Street. The women have known each other for about four years, working together on a few different projects, including co-leading their daughters’ chapter of the Girl Scouts.

As word of mouth spread, they picked up a major client and have now partnered with the for production on a larger scale.

“Both of us were at the point in life where we wanted to do something that was fun and entrepreneurial,” Driscoll said.

Examining their skills, she continued, they decided to follow Gibson’s love of baking and Driscoll’s business acumen. They first started selling at , which led to regular weekly orders and ones for events like baby showers. A Valentine’s Day special was a big hit in town, netting about 300 orders, plus 100 for a business event.

Over the two months Village Cupcakes has been in business, Driscoll said it has sold and given away a total of more than 2,000 cupcakes.

“It's just gotten out,” Driscoll said. “We’ve gotten a lot of support from the community.”

With seven kids between the two of them, and Driscoll’s full-time job as a financial analyst, Village Cupcakes has led to some very busy lives for the pair.  “One of our problems is we have a ton of ideas and also have regular lives,” Driscoll said.

“You have great ideas, and then suddenly you’re like, ‘Oh, the reality of it!’ It’s a lot of work.”

Village Cupcakes soon found the need for a bigger space and partnered with Cranbury Inn owner Tom Ingegneri to use the inn’s large kitchen. “It couldn’t be better,” Driscoll said. “He’s been extremely helpful.”

That partnership has netted Driscoll and Gibson advice from a seasoned local business owner, and it has also led to new opportunities. Last week, Village Cupcake handled the dessert for the Cranbury Business Association’s meeting, which was held at the inn.

“We had always envisioned that we would go from this startup phase into this bigger phase where we were using a commercial kitchen, and filling large orders. From there we hope we’ll move into a storefront… but right now we’re kind of hanging out in phase two,” Driscoll said.

It might take between 6 months and a year to move to a commercial storefront, she estimated.

While it might seem like preparing so many of these types of treats could be less than ideal for the baker’s health, Driscoll said repeated exposure helps minimize one’s intake.

“I think they’re fantastic, but you certainly don't crave them every day when you’re working with them every day,” she said.

Almost all of Village Cupcake’s business is done online, from “business meetings” through text messages to the ordering process. Their website offers a list of options for the cakes—though custom orders are also accepted—and e-mail is perhaps the best way to place an order.

Next up is the St. Patrick’s Day special, “Irish Dream,” and the deadline to order for that is tomorrow, Tuesday. This new creation is made up of a chocolate Guinness cake and a Bailey’s Irish Cream-flavored icing.

The special order comes with six mini-sized “babycake” Irish Dream cakes and six more Classic Vanilla babycakes. The set costs $15 and will be delivered on Thursday, St. Patrick’s Day.

For now, there’s no plan for Driscoll to leave her full-time job to work exclusively with cupcakes. But, she said, the dessert industry has been a welcome change of pace.

“I’ve been working professionally for 20 years now, and this is just fun!”

For more on Village Cupcakes, visit www.villagecupcake.com. To place an order, e-mail villagecupcake@gmail.com or call 609-619-5040.