You can call me cupcake

source: mb.com.ph

MANILA, Philippines -- If Lori Joyce was a cupcake, she says that she’d probably be a Koo Koo cupcake.

She chuckles as she describes this sweet confection: “It’s a coconut cake with cream cheese icing, with lots of coconut shavings, because I have crazy curly hair on top. The coconut is very sweet but tropical and it’s very fun and alive and it’s not boring but it’s not conservative either.”

But Lori thinks her partner in the cupcake business, Heather White, would be “more like the traditional chocolate, more serious, more elegant, more classical with an edge. Maybe it would be the true classic cake with dolce de leche caramel with it, with an edge, with a surprise.”

Two different flavors, two distinct personalities. But if opposites attract, then that is perhaps the glue, or the icing, that cements the friendship that turned into a business partnership.

Lori recalls that she and Heather were both 15 years old when they met at their first job in Victoria, a small town outside of Vancouver. “We became very good friends right away. We always dreamed and talked about starting our own business. Being typical girlfriends we brainstormed about different ideas, and while working in New York, that’s when we came up with that idea.”

Working at Ground Zero then, right after 9/11, the ladies absorbed the sad and somber atmosphere of that tragic site. They reacted to this darkness by choosing a product that for them, represented all the cheerfulness in the world—cupcakes! Lori explains: “We wanted to create a business that was the opposite of what was happening in our society. We wanted to create a store and a business where children or adults would come in and it would feel like fantasy, you’d forget about your reality for five minutes. We intentionally designed our stores so it felt like you’re inside a cupcake, like you’re a child again, where everything is fresh and simple and innocent.”

The Cupcake Girls’ approach to business was equally unconventional. Going against the grain of three important principles for going into business, they plunged into their enterprise without a plan, chose a product they knew nothing about and partnered with their best friend. Yet, there is clear evidence of success. Each of their stores across Canada sells an average of 5,000 cupcakes a day during the peak seasons of summer or Valentine’s Day. They are also expanding to the U.S.A. and Asia soon.

“I think ignorance is bliss,” Lori remarks. “Because we didn’t know and because we were ignorant of it, we had to learn so we had to trust people to teach us. A lot of entrepreneurs start a business because they know what they’re doing. But sometimes they fail because they think they know better than anybody else and they don’t want to listen to anybody else. And so sometimes they miss out. Because we didn’t know, we were very open to hearing from everybody. I think those were the most important tools—trusting and listening.”

Now, viewers in Southeast Asia can take a peek into the trials and triumphs of riding the Cupcake Girls’ learning curve as they watch the ladies’ daily routine in their eponymously titled program.

Lori declares: “I think they’re going to be surprised because our show is not like (other baking shows). We open up a lot of personal issues and it’s really how our personal lives mix in with our business, how our personalities revolve around decisions we make in our business. (Other baking shows) are about making cakes in a bakery, and that’s it. Our show really takes you outside of our business and into our personal issues.”

Catch The Cupcake Girls as it premieres on the Asian Food Channel on Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 9:30PM. The Asian Food Channel can be viewed over Skycable Channel 22. For more information, log on to www.asianfoodchannel.com.

source: mb.com.ph