Building the Sprinkles Cupcake Empire with Candace Nelson

Candice, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

There is a lot to talk about. I want to first go back to the beginning and we'll take the story from there. Starting Sprinkles. I know about your story, but for people who aren't familiar, how did you start Sprinkles in the first place, Candice?

So I started my career in a more sort of traditional career path. I was recruited out of school to work at an investment bank in corporate finance. It was the height of the dot-com boom in the late '90s. And then, of course, there was the dot-com bust and I was out of a job and wondering what I was going to do with myself. And then 9/11 happened and really gave me a moment to do some reflection on what I wanted to do with my life yet again on a deeper level. And I realized I didn't love what I had been doing, which was crunching numbers, and I wanted to do something that—

Yeah.

I was more passionate about. So instead of going to business school, I went to pastry school, which was a really serious left turn for me because I was raised in a family that really believed in traditional education. My dad was a lawyer. They wanted me to obviously do whatever made me happy, but that pastry school had never really been part of the plan.

For sure.

And all my friends were kind of scratching their heads at what— they kind of figured it was a phase and I'd come back to my senses. But when I got to pastry school, I realized I really loved it. I loved just how tangible it was, creating something with my hands that I could give to someone and watch them enjoy. That was very rewarding for me. And so it grew from there. I realized that the cupcake at the time was very basic and more of a commodity. You'd see them in the grocery stores. packed in plastic clamshells, and they were a kid's treat and nostalgic, and everybody in our country loves a cupcake, but—

Oh, yes.

We didn't really like them beyond that nostalgia, right? Because they weren't that tasty. They were just kind of meant for a kid's lunchbox. So, I thought that the cupcake's time had come and it was time for a reinvention. And, I wanted to take this sort of lowly kid's treat and make it elevated and giftable and aspirational. And in doing so, I wanted to sort of set the cupcake on a pedestal and devote a bakery just to the cupcake.

There is so much to unpack. One thing I want to go back to, because I don't feel like I've heard this on other podcasts, when you decided to go to pastry school, what were the alternatives you were considering? Was there anything else you were thinking about and doing? Obviously you said the MBA was people that force on you, but were there other businesses you wanted to start, other things you thought about doing, other careers? I'm just curious if there was at that time anything else.

No, I never imagined that I would be an entrepreneur. I grew up in this very risk-averse household. And so entrepreneurship was not a path I thought would ever be for me. I never thought I would take that path. And so In sort of making that first step, that first courageous step off of my sort of predicted path and going to pastry school, I think that is where I sort of built the confidence and the courage to think about entrepreneurship as a viable option.

How did you deal with the pushback? Because you said that wasn't your kind of maybe life path by others. They're questioning you, like, is Candice okay? How did you deal with that pushback at the time?

I think I felt pretty strongly about what I was doing. I had this unique insight of what I thought the world could use, which was an upscale cupcake. And I think I just recognized that other people didn't have that unique set of experiences or perspective to allow them to see the vision that I saw for the world.

With that too, so knowing that at the time with these cupcakes, they're very basic. Everyone kind of knew that too. And we saw that. Everyone relates. Perfect. That picture you already put in our minds. Did you like, what kind of research did you do at that time? You're like, okay, well, in this area, I know of cupcakes as this. Did you like also talk to other people, research here? Like, I'm just curious at that time, because like, looking back, it always seems so obvious. Like, oh yeah, there's nothing, there's nothing there. And like sprinkles made sense. Of course, Candace started. But at the time, like, what did you do to research that to figure out if this is like, you were just in a microcosm, or if there's like, really, this is a whole thing where there's an opportunity here? I'm just curious on that.

So a couple things. One, I had just recently gotten married, and when I was getting married, I was so obsessed with Martha Stewart Weddings magazine.

Ooh.

So I was doing all this research for my wedding. I was going around town and doing the wedding cake tastings, which of course was my favorite part. But I also happened to notice through Martha Stewart Weddings and also all of these wedding cake makers I was meeting with, there was a new trend on the scene, and it was the The cupcake tower, the upscale cupcake tower. And this was sort of a new trendy alternative to the traditional wedding cake. And so that kind of put that idea in my mind that cupcakes can be upscale. They can be fancy, right? For lack of a better word. I, of course, opted for the traditional wedding cake because I had to have that. But it definitely wormed its way into my subconscious. And then also just looking back to sort of Birthday parties when I was at the office, you know, someone would always be somebody's birthday and someone would go out and get a cake, and then there'd be this, you know, search for like where are some forks? Where's a where's a knife that can cut this cake? And then of course, you know, we'd get carrot and somebody didn't like carrot or they couldn't eat walnuts or whatever. It was a total mess, and then somebody had to clean up. There's just so much to love about a cupcake. Everybody can have their own flavor. There's no fork and knife involved. It's It's personalized, it's portable. I mean, there's so much to love. And also, just to backtrack a little bit, I grew up overseas a lot of my life. I was an expat living in Southeast Asia. And so I tended to have an obsession, sort of almost like an outsider foreigner's obsession with American things, treats especially. And cupcakes are very uniquely American. And so I had a— A special love for cupcakes. And I also knew that in reinventing the cupcake, it wasn't like bringing some new cultural trend from some other country. It's like, this is ingrained in our culture. We celebrate birthdays as kids with cupcakes. So in elevating something that people already loved, I knew there was a built-in market.

With this, at that time, so you knew already this is going to be a thing. You have it in your mind, I'm doing this. There's no other option anyways. We're going for it. Take me through the early days of getting this started. Like there's so many aspects of this I want to go into, but first I want to think about like, how did you make your first sales, create the first product of what this was going to be? Because I talked to a lot of founders and like these early days, like to me are the most exciting to talk about. Cause I'm like, how do you get off the ground though? Cause like people can talk about scaling later on. It's like, it's like a pipe dream for many people that never get to that level. Like, how do I get started? How did you get started tangibly on like the product itself? Like having great cupcakes, getting in the hands of people in the early days. I'm curious about that.

So I had this idea for an upscale cupcake, cupcake that would be reinvented, a cupcake that would cost $3 as opposed to the 75 cents people were used to paying for them.

Going crazy. I love it.

But I knew that if I were going to bet my life savings on bootstrapping this business, which really isn't a defensible business. If you think about it, like you work with a lot of technology companies, you think about IP, you think about what is the defensible moat here? There really is none when it comes to a cupcake bakery. Anyone can make a cupcake. Anyone can start a bakery. So I knew that I had to make a really exceptional product. That had to be sort of my first line of defense. Like, this product's got to be good. And so I spent almost 2 years recipe developing. My husband, I mean, much to the dismay of his family, had told me he would join me in this crazy venture if I could really nail the product. And so that was, for me, never having thought of myself as an entrepreneur, that was a really important first step is to have my co-founder who really believed in me and said, hey, I got you. I will do this with you. And that was super helpful from a confidence perspective. And then lit a fire under me to get this product just really sort of a memorable tasting cupcake. And then, of course, if I was reinventing the cupcake, I couldn't stop with just the ingredients and the technique. I had to create a whole brand from scratch that really spoke to the quality of the cupcake. And, you know, you're right. I had to sort of test my idea a little bit before going all in because all signs pointed to this was a crazy idea. Not only had no one done it before, but it was the height of the low-carb diet craze. And here I was trying to sort of erect this temple to carbs. So I just started, you know, by, you know, working out of my home kitchen in West Hollywood.

Nice.

And, you know, first started by showing up at every party with these cupcakes and people were like, Who's the girl with the cupcakes? She's just a cupcake pusher. She's so annoying. I would show up at trunk shows. Then I started seeding my product, product seeding. I didn't call it that at the time, but product seeding around town, showing up at concierges at hotels, showing up at fancy salons. And it was me. It was the founder with the cupcakes telling my story, very boots on the ground, very do things that don't scale. And that's what I did. And I started to develop this. loyal but devoted following. Just out of my West Hollywood apartment, I had the producer of the Tyra Banks Show call me. I had no idea how she found my number. And she was like, I want your cupcakes for Tyra's 30th birthday. So I knew I was onto something. And that was just the sort of traction that I needed to start to look for a retail location and really take this quite seriously.

Okay. There's 2 things in that that I have to cover. One with the distribution side of it and people finding you. You said like the Tower Bank show, like didn't know how they found you. Were other people like, I'm assuming it spread through word of mouth, but then were people like, hey, here's Candace's number, call her, here's her email. Like, what was that? Like, what did you have, a website? Like, I'm just trying to picture this. Like, how are they getting in touch with you to get these cupcakes? They're like dealing cupcakes underground. I'm curious, like what—

This is so pre-Instagram days. This was like Drop the cupcakes in their little bakery box with my business card taped to the top. So, this was old school, like landline ringing.

Oh, the youths have no idea.

And so, for sure, it was organic word of mouth, which of course is how you know you have product-market fit, to use a tech term. But it was really important for me to see that my product was already speaking for itself.

And then one other thing. So you said, I can't gloss over this because this has bothered me the whole time, 2 years of product development. That's non-trivial. People think about starting a business and like, yeah, let's do this thing and sell it tomorrow or next week. It's like 2 years of development. What did that entail? Are you testing cupcakes daily? Just tell me a little bit more about that process because I love that. It's fascinating.

Sure. Well, and to be clear, it wasn't like I sat spent every day solely dedicated to recipe development over those 2 years. Those 2 years also included looking for a retail location, building the brand, but I was always tweaking. And really what it looked like was my husband and I seated at our dining room table with just platters of cupcakes strewn everywhere with little half bites taken out of each one. And then I would take our notes, which we would scribble onto notepads, and I would go back into the kitchen and start again. And meanwhile, This is like I was in my late 20s, we're in LA, all my friends are up on Sunset Boulevard drinking cosmopolitans, and I was in the kitchen in my kitchen clogs hunched over KitchenAid mixer. It wasn't cool. It definitely wasn't cool. And, and I was— there were definitely periods of time where I was like, did I just throw away my career for, uh, you know, Saturday nights in the kitchen? I don't know. But, but it was fun. And I think, you know, at the time there was a lot of uncertainty and doubt, of course, but it makes for a great story now.

Great to look back on for sure. No, no doubt about that.

When you're in it, it's hard.

Yes. When you're in it, it's a lot, a lot different situation. And you mentioned then finding this retail location, which I've heard you talk about other podcasts. I don't want, I want to get into that in a second, but I'm curious before you start the retail location, like, Give us an idea of where the business was at in terms of demand and everything. Because to me, that's always tricky when people talk about like, oh, this and found this. It's like, but where was the company at? When I talk to founders and they're like, we raised this money here, but how much traction did you have? I'm curious just generally, where was the business at by the time you're like, okay, we need to find a retail location.

I had sort of a brisk business that I was doing out of my West Hollywood apartment. But I mean, Brisk given that I had one KitchenAid mixer and one employee, which was me. I mean, it was as much as I could handle certainly, but it was also just— and that was all I needed to know that— to have comfort with the risk I was about to take in terms of signing a lease.

Hmm.

I really thought that if I could elevate this cupcake to a place where— sorry, elevate this cupcake to a place where people in the entertainment industry wanted to send it around as gifts, That in and of itself would be a good business because, I mean, I know you're LA-based and I'm sure you have friends in the entertainment industry, but there's a real culture of gift giving. And I knew at the time there were a couple cookie businesses that, you know, had the lion's share of that market. And I thought, at a minimum, I've got birthday parties. Everybody has a birthday every year. And if I can get some of that gift giving, I should be okay. I'm not going to fall flat on my face. But it was a bootstrapped business. My husband and I pooled our resources from a few years in the career force, and we gave ourselves that amount of money and however much time that was to give this a go.

And then finding a location. Take us through that part of the process, Candice.

Yeah. Hard to do in a tight real estate market, which it was at the time. And also, my husband and I were Newcomers to Los Angeles. So we really studied the market as outsiders. We drove everywhere from Pasadena to Venice to try to figure out where would be the right place for this very special cupcake shop. And noticed a lot of things in sort of scouring the town, which was, you know, a lot of people say people in LA don't eat carbs. But as we drove around, we saw a lot of donut shops, a lot of burger joints. As you know, they're like in every strip center. I don't know why people say that. LA definitely has more of a reputation for green juice and yoga. But that also gave me some comfort. But we did not have a lot of success finding a location right away because we had no experience. We had no track record. We are not the ideal people to be leasing a space to. And then, in addition to that, nobody really thought our idea was any good. All we ever heard was, what else are you going to sell? And I remember one landlord hung up on me. No, just cupcakes, just cupcakes. So a lot of nonbelievers out there, a lot of nonbelievers.

What did you want in a space? Because you're looking all over, you're looking, like I said, Vanessa Pasadena, basically all over LA. For people who don't know, LA is very spread out. It's like multiple cities, it seems like, in one. What did you want in a space at that time? Were there things you particularly were looking for? And tell us how you landed on the, uh, the Beverly Hills location.

I think we were looking for a mix of foot traffic, which by the way is hard to find in LA, as you know. I mean, LA is very much a driving culture. It's, it's hard to find foot traffic unless you're at the Grove, which of course we couldn't afford. We couldn't afford that rent. We have since opened at the Grove, but at the time we couldn't. And, you know, just, I, we were, we were really going a lot by just our gut. It's not like we were looking at numbers. I mean, we had a commercial broker who was helping But it just had to feel right. And ultimately, we landed on Beverly Hills. And people scratch their heads at this because they're like, wasn't that so expensive? How did you afford that? I mean, this was Rodeo Drive adjacent, adjacent. It's just a couple blocks away on a block of retail that was not known for being very fancy at all.

Sure.

And we took over just a rundown sandwich shop. And it was tiny, 600 square feet front and back, but it made sense to have that 90210 zip code for us because what we were doing is we were creating a really elevated sort of, what would you say, artisanal product.

Yeah.

And we were creating a boutique that almost felt more like a Rodeo Drive boutique than it did a traditional bakery. So, it all made sense as far as The product we were putting out was luxury, and so the space and the geography had to sort of reflect that.

Okay. Continuing the story, you find the space, you get the space in Beverly Hills, Beverly Hills. And I want to know opening day, leading up to that, and then launching, having people actually be able to— just walk me through that part of the story. I want to hear more about that.

Well, again, my husband and I, not to gloss over this, we had no experience in retail and restaurants. I mean, I had gone to pastry school. I can make a good cupcake, but that was about it. We renovated this space. It was beautiful. And on day 1, I baked enough cupcakes to fill the cupcake case. I figured we'd be good, that people would be coming in buying 1 or 2 at a time. And on day 1, this email newsletter went out called Daily Candy. Some people might remember it.

Yeah.

But it was sort of like one of the earliest email marketing newsletters. And it featured us for the day. And people showed up for that newsletter, man. I mean, people really followed it. So, we had a crowd from the moment we opened. And I was wrong. People were not buying 1 or 2, they were buying 1 or 2 dozen. So within a few hours, we were completely sold out. My dream had become a nightmare because all of these customers who'd driven across town, found parking, and had waited in line for cupcakes were now being told to come back later. Um, we're working as fast as we can, we're really sorry. So I spent like the first— Few months probably sweating it out between baking furiously in the back, coming out front and apologizing to customers that we had no cupcakes. It was a disaster. Our production was a disaster. We had no idea what we were doing. We did not have a team that knew what they were doing. We were hiring people just as they walked in, just out of desperation. So we were drinking from a fire hose from day one. And I think I don't ever recommend people Doing that. But what's interesting is that scarcity, particularly in a town in LA that's driven a little bit by FOMO—

Oh, absolutely.

It ended up driving demand. And we became known for that line out the door, which some people actually accused me later of actually premeditating that. Oh, did you make the store really small so you'd always have a line out there? I'm like, no, I had no idea what I was doing. That was all I could afford. But it did end up working in our favor. And we did end up eventually hiring some people, getting our production in order, and continued to be the beneficiary of a lot of great word of mouth and buzz. And that ultimately ended up coming from celebrities, not just your average everyday tastemaker.

Did you have to— I mean, to that point, because from very early on, you had buzz already. Did you have to do much marketing at all? Did you have to just feed some of the other stuff like, oh, we know, get this in the hands of these people, it might help. Like just same with you, that side of things. I'm always obsessed with growth and I know some things when you have these like viral products like this, it's like it definitely gives you bumps and maybe carry. I'm just curious on how the early on the marketing, how you had, how do you even have to like handle that with Sprinkles?

Early on we had no budget for marketing. We probably did not pay for PR or marketing for the the first couple of years. And then we knew as we started to expand, first we opened in Newport Beach, then we decided the cupcake industry exploded so rapidly. We went from being a terrible idea to a natural idea. And all these cupcake bakeries started popping up everywhere.

Of course.

So we knew we had to sort of, if we wanted to be a national brand and a cupcake leader, we had to expand outside of Southern California and prove the concept had legs outside of just this Southern California market. So, we ended up going to Dallas. And, at that point, I knew as we were entering a new market, we needed to really put some money behind PR and enter this market in the right way. But, the celebrities really helped us just organically. They loved Sprinkles. They would wait in line for Sprinkles. They would talk about Sprinkles in their interviews. Oprah Winfrey had us on her show. Later on, we started this initiative where we would partner with a celebrity who would choose a charity and we would co-develop a cupcake together. Like we did one with Blake Lively. And that, of course, generated a lot of buzz and obviously raised a lot of money for great cause. So we learned to work really creatively too with our customer base and our celebrities and had a lot of fun. But that organic word of mouth, I think, is so important. And particularly now as businesses are having trouble with customer acquisition, you have to go back to, do you have a good product? Do you have something that people are telling their friends about? But yeah, at a certain point in a business's life cycle, you do need to add a little fuel to the fire there.

With that too, one thing I want to unpack with the growth, because if you take a step back, so you have an idea for the sprinkles, you're like, okay, this is obviously you see the world a certain way. That's what I love about entrepreneurs. They like Have this vision for it. You're like, this is gonna be a lot of work. I don't know if this is gonna work or not. Obviously you take a jump, like a risk. You go into this and you do this, and then you do this first location. You find the first location, all the work that went into that. Again, you don't know what's gonna happen. People show up and they keep showing up and they keep showing up, and you have this one location. But like going back to your vision, you knew this was gonna be a thing, or at least, at least you thought so. And then this kind of confirmed that. And then we just talked about the growth you went through.

Yeah.

Take me through, like, after your first location did well and you're— what point were you like, all right, our expansion plans are what? Like, do we want to go other cities outside of LA? Do we stay in Southern California? Like, just take me through how you thought about growth at that time. Because again, a lot of times entrepreneurs, like, there's a lot of ways they can expand and it's up to them to decide that. So I'm just curious on how you and your husband were thinking about that after you had this like validated check, like, First from West Hollywood in the kitchen to this new actual location. How'd you think about growth from the early days then after that?

It's a great question. And it's funny because not to fast forward, but 8 years in, I stepped away, brought in a strategic partner. I stepped away operationally from Sprinkles. And it's probably the one thing that my husband and I still talk about to this day. Did we do the right thing? Because we had no idea really how fast the market would explode and how quickly those cupcake bakeries would pop up. At the same time, we had a lot of interest in franchises. People were begging us for franchises. They wanted to take the Sprinkles experience back home to their hometown. And I get it. And we were very focused on owning our channel from beginning to end. We were not going to wholesale. We had a lot of offers for that, obviously. We were not going to franchise. We were going to own this from beginning to end. And I do stand behind that because I think, to my point about the cupcake having to be really memorable and exceptional, the difference between a memorable cupcake and an average cupcake is it's very subtle. It's very nuanced. It's an extra minute in the oven. It's a sloppily frosted or boxed cupcake. It's a bad customer service experience. And so, I couldn't— I mean, truly, recovering control freak here. couldn't hand off that experience to someone else. Now, in saying no to all those franchises, what happened was all those people went back to their hometowns and just started their own mom-and-pop.

Yeah.

Right? And so, what we ended up doing was, as we saw how quickly the market was exploding, we decided we had to really stake our claim as the original cupcake bakery, as the leader in this world. And so, we started expanding across the country to really become a national brand as opposed to just owning one geographic area, which would've been a lot simpler.

Yeah.

Because what we were doing was quite complex from— in the food world, we were picking up, going to a totally different market, having to reintroduce ourselves to the market, train and hire entirely new staff, train them in the Sprinkles way, in our company culture. And then, we were fully boots on the ground. Baking and frosting everything on site. And then, we'd pick up again and go to another town and do the same thing. So, it was really hard. But I think ultimately, it worked for us because from New York to LA, we probably had the best brand recognition. I mean, arguably, I think we did. But also, for me, it was about how else could we stake our claim? We ended up rolling out dry mixes through Williams-Sonoma. So 250 stores across the United States had Sprinkles branded mixes that did very well. And then I also really leaned and stepped into my personal brand. I was the face on the very hit show on Food Network called Cupcake Wars.

Yes.

And every week, I was in people's living rooms and the intro was, the founder of Sprinkles, the original cupcake bakery. So that also helped us in terms of our brand recognition. But every now and again we're like, should we have franchised? I don't know. You never know. There's not necessarily a right answer. I'm very happy with how everything unfolded, but there's always questions that linger.

Okay. Because we're going to have some fun with this. The franchise part, let's just say you would've gone down that path. What would you have wanted from that path for you to be happy with? That decision of going the franchise route?

You know, I think I always saw Sprinkles as a business that could exist in pretty much any town, any mid-sized town, small city in America. I really, really saw that. I think, you know, what was hard was when we would open in a city and people would come in and say, oh, you're just like such and such cupcake place down the street. Really got to me because—

No.

I know. No, no, they're just like us. But you can't expect customers to understand that difference. The onus is on you to really lean into your brand and differentiate yourself from the competition and continue to innovate and to continue to set that standard. So, I think I would have loved to have seen Sprinkles in every mall across America. Like a Mrs. Fields.

Ah, yes. Other founders who may be in a similar position, who are thinking about franchising versus kind of owning the distribution, uh, going about their own way, owning all the stores, etc., anything you would tell them about the decision? Any advice for them?

You know, that's hard for me to say because I'm certainly not an expert in franchising. I would I would say that you have to weigh the risk of the market outpacing the growth that you can handle on your own.

Sure.

And sort of look at the pros and cons there because franchising is certainly— I mean, we could have very much capitalized on the cupcake fervor that was going on at the time and how much people wanted to open their own little bakeries. So again, not that I regret what we did, it's just always one of those fun little mind games we like to play.

Well, it's like even if you went the franchise route, then you're thinking about the other route you could have gone. It's not like you would've— Yeah, you always think about the other side of it and you just have to live with the decisions you make, which is the reality of it. What I want to get into, you did this, you went that route, you kept expanding, you grew, you grew. You mentioned 8 years in, you sold a significant stake to private equity, I believe. Take me through the timing of that, why you ended up going that route then. I know there's always debate between selling and not selling and when to sell and all these things. Just curious about your perspective on that as well.

Well, I think the best time to sell, which can be hard for a founder, is when things are going really well and someone will pay for the opportunities that you still have ahead of you.

We had just launched the Cupcake I was just going to say that.

Yeah. Yeah. Really disrupted the industry again and established us as a clear leader. And the Cupcake ATM has really been amazing. You'll see them popping up everywhere now. They're really expanding through airports and college campuses.

I saw it at USC during business school. I remember seeing it.

That's right.

I was like, what is that? What? That's amazing. Yes. That's awesome.

And then I think my husband and I really like that early stage, founding stage of the company. It's creative. You know everybody's names. You're like, everybody's in it together.

It's just this feeling.

Zero to one. Zero to one. Exactly. And we're less excited about just straight operations. And having a national brick-and-mortar business, food business, is No joke, it's really exhausting. It's physically grueling, and there wasn't a moment in the in a 24-hour day that there wasn't someone working in a sprinkles bakery. So the phone could ring anytime, day or night. And then on top of that, I had these little boys who you know when they were little babies they were portable. But now that they were starting to go to school and have commitments and that sort of thing, I didn't feel like I could be on the road as much. And so it was a personal decision as well as a professional decision. You know, it's. We've done what we can. We need to hand this off to somebody who really has the operations expertise that we don't have. I mean, we can continue to figure it out. We've done well so far. But there comes a time, I think, and having come up in investment banking, there was this thing called founder syndrome whereby the founder just has this lock on the business and thinks that nobody else could understand it or run it the way they can. And I didn't wanna be that person.

You're like, it won't be me, I swear. Um, that's amazing. That it is interesting cuz there's like, yeah, a lot of founders who struggle with that part of it. You, this is not the business you started. You're not doing the tasks you started doing. A lot of founders in like industry we're in for software, like you're not writing code if you wanted to write code, you're like managing people. You're not, you're thinking about cultural, like org charts and like, there's just a whole different thing at that scale that is not for everyone. Um, which I always love when founders like recognize that and like, yeah, I actually don't enjoy this part of it. And then they like, they sell or they get out and like bring in a CEO, whatever. Like, cuz it's not what they wanted to be doing. It's like, great, you found the next thing. To that point though, you did that. And then there's so many questions, but what, what point does Pizzana come into play here? What point do you decide to invest in other You have a portfolio of investments as well with CN2 Ventures. Take me through those 2 things, where those fit into the story of Candace.

Sure. So there are founders out there who sort of analyze an industry, see white space, and they kind of come up with a solution to a problem and they go for it. So much respect for that. That's not how I operate. I am very focused on passion being part of the plan. And so Baking brought me to Sprinkles and my love for pizza brought me to Pizzana. And it really came about almost accidentally. I met our now executive chef at a pizza party he was catering and I took one bite of his pizza. I went over to meet him. I heard his story and the business was sort of building in my mind. I could see the brand. I could see the space. I could see exactly what I could do with it. And Daniele, Udit is his name, had come from Naples, Italy. And part of his American dream was to own his own restaurant. And I just said, I would love to do that with you.

Yes.

So, we are now opening our 5th location of Pizzana. We've also taken it out of state to Dallas. We're shipping nationwide our frozen pizzas. But it really, it starts with a passion for me. I think that there's sort of the connective thread between Sprinkles and Pizzana is this idea of taking foods that people love, simple foods, and elevating them through ingredients, through technique, through experience. And that's just, I think, how people love to eat. I know it's how I love to eat. And I also love the unifying power of food.

And then from that too, investing in other businesses. Where does that fit in? You just love the idea of supporting them? How did you even decide to start doing that? Because there's a lot of ways to go about this.

So CN2 Ventures is more of a venture studio. So Pizzana is part of CN2 Ventures, and we have a couple other businesses, one in the early childhood space where we are pairing with founders and we are operationally involved. Now, depending on what ends up taking off, that ends up taking the lion's share of our time and work, and that right now is Pizzana. And then on the side, I'm doing some angel investing just because I really, as I said, I love that early stage startup phase. And I know that I can't keep starting all the businesses myself. That gives me a way to sort of keep playing in that early startup sandbox without having to get so distracted. I love investing in products that I personally love, obviously, but also ones where I feel like I can add some meaningful value. So typically investing at very early stage and where I can add in terms of my social influence or my network or what have you. So that's just been a really fun way for me to continue to keep learning, quite frankly, but also stay involved in that early stage piece.

There's one kind of theme I want to talk about next. That's the last thing I want to jam about is brand. Obviously Sprinkles has a phenomenal brand. How do you think about building brands? Obviously you're investing in some, you're kind of seeding some. Thoughts around brand building? I know you've done— so, okay, you have a couple books, another book recently, obviously on shows. Not everyone wants to be that front-facing, but you mentioned earlier in this interview that you thought that was an important piece of it to do that. The brand strategy of you, how do you think about building brands? I'm just curious on—

No, I'm glad you brought that up. And I feel like I was going to talk about that earlier, but then lost my train of thought.

Lots to talk about.

My ADHD. But when I was talking about how building a cupcake bakery is essentially not a defensible business, obviously I started with the product, but then beyond that, it really is about the brand.

Absolutely.

So leaned heavily into brand and trademarked whatever we could, which we ended up trademarking the modern dot, which is that decorative edible decoration on top of the cupcake. Because as soon as we opened and all these cupcake shops started popping up, guess what? They also looked a lot like ours. And there's not very much you can defend. So whatever you can do to sort of own that brand and keep showing up in a way that delivers on your brand promise. And your product is obviously what you're putting out into the world, but your brand is the feeling you give your customers, right? It's how your brand lives in the hearts and minds of your customers. And for Sprinkles, it was all about injecting joy into everyday life. So everything we did was through that lens and with that in mind. And that is definitely piece of the puzzle that helped us scale our business through the Great Recession. You know, people really still relied on sprinkles. It made them feel better. It was a luxury, but an affordable luxury that they really relied on during, you know, a downturn in the market. And so, in the same way, we're really leaning into brand with Pizzana and hoping that that will help carry us through whatever recession, not recession that we're in or about to go through.

With that brand side of things, I know you talked about earlier, like going into new markets completely, like Dallas, for instance. You have an idea of what your brand is already, especially in the markets you're currently in and what you've built and developed. How does that translate in terms of going to a new market and like making sure you portray that brand both to obviously internally customers and everything, but then externally be like, this is what we want people to think about this new brand coming into a new location? Like, how do you think about that when you've— As you expanded?

Brand in terms of new customers or in terms of your team in the new locations?

New customers. Yeah.

So I think it does start with the team. And what's really probably my favorite part about being at the helm of a growing business is being able to offer opportunity to people who want to grow with the business. So the idea that an assistant manager becomes a general manager, a general manager becomes you know, a regional manager. And so, what we like to do is offer that opportunity to, you know, take someone from one location and move them to another. So, like our team in Dallas has been trained by managers that came from our Brentwood location. And they are really carrying that culture and those brand promises with them. And so, it's just sort of naturally infused in our team. And those are our brand ambassadors essentially. You know, they're on the front lines every day and and they're delivering to our customers. But by the same token, I do believe it's important to be a neighborhood business to a certain extent. Like, you want to be— Sprinkles has to be Sprinkles, but it also has to be Sprinkles Dallas or Sprinkles Scottsdale. And so, I think one of the things we've done well is in having those PR teams and those marketing teams on the ground locally, as well as just getting involved on a local level in terms of charities, food banks, local schools, that sort of thing. We want to have that neighborhood feel wherever we open in addition to delivering on that overall brand promise as well.

As we wrap things up here, Candice, tell us about the book, the latest book. Tell us all the things.

Sure. So I just released a book called Sweet Success. It's about how to turn your passion into profit. And basically, it's a guide to entrepreneurship from conception to sale told through the lens of me as a first-time founder building Sprinkles. I obviously bring in some other topics as well, feature some of my other female founder friends, as well as some things I've done since then. But the idea is that I really want to help more women at scale. I've done a little bit of mentoring and obviously some investing in female-founded businesses, but being a founder is pretty much one of the hardest things you can do. And I just wanted to offer that inspiration for people who are maybe scared to take that first step all the way through to scaling, building company culture that you love, that attracts Great hires, and building a brand from scratch because that's been so important to me. So really Sweet Success is a book that no matter where you are in your sort of journey, you'll be able to take something from. But ultimately I wrote it to encourage more women to bet on themselves and live their dreams.

I love it. Where's the best place for people to learn more about all the things you're doing, Candice, and connect with you as well?

Sure. So I'm on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter @CandiceNelson, and I'm also on LinkedIn. And then my book is available at local bookstores, also via Amazon. And I have a Substack, which is kind of regular, should be more regular than it is.

I love it. So there's many places to find you. We'll make sure we link everything in the show notes as well. Candice, this was so much fun. Thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you so much.