Cupcakes have created a craze in the United States, and markets are quickly forming around the new buzz. The cupcake market is coming to be and soon it will be watched by investors for potential business ventures. In the meantime, small shop owners are coming out to set up and sell delicious cupcakes to those who could use a yummy snack or treat.
The good news about the cupcake market is that competition is heating up and the pressure to produce great, low priced cupcakes is on. The bad news is for entrepreneurs on the other side of the fence that are trying to just break even keeping their stores open. Regardless, the increased attention for the snack marks a new cultural change that will shape the future of the food business.
In the Pittsburgh area, there are 81 retail stores that sell baked goods and are considered to be the heart of cupcake entrepreneurship in the city. Bakers running establishments like these within Pittsburgh are only raking in an average of $20,000 per year. That’s not a bad start for a budding market, but it still raises concerns.
One concern within this specific is the inflation of cupcake cost. A good market for the Pittsburgh area is generally expected to kick the price of the average cupcake up. The more dollars that the average person shells out for a cupcake, the more shops can move in, the easier it is to establish a shop, and the more money the bakers make.
The downside of this is that the prices might inflate far too much. The average worker in Pittsburgh might have to pay more and more out of pocket for the treat, making the area less attractive to live and work in. The city can rest assured that the sale of one treat won’t affect the local economy too drastically.
On the scale of the U.S. Economy things are much different. The United States actually imports over 700 million dollars in baked goods more than it exports. This means that there is a massive trade gap between how much we produce and how much we buy from other countries.
Economists look to culinary training schools and institutions that have been pumping out highly qualified chefs for decades. In order to compete with the other countries in the baked goods market, the United States needs to shape up and make full use of its creative, culinary potential. Those individuals indirectly bring money into the country with goods that foreign buyers find valuable.
America is no France or Switzerland. Chances are, we won’t be the world’s baking superpower, but that won’t stop the country from competing more intensely with better goods. As a country, we are producing millions of cupcakes by the droves and crates to be shipped anywhere. Maybe we could close our trade gap by marketing these rapid fire cupcakes overseas.
