This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Tinder-matched couple swipes right to sell cupcakes. After meeting on Tinder, a couple takes a long walk through Central Park and decides to sell cupcakes for $20 each. And guess what, my friends? It works. I wanna call this episode the $20 Cupcake.
Shout out to $100 startup. This might be even better, the $20 Cupcake. And as you might be aware, cupcakes are a thing. Cupcakes, I don't know if they ever stopped being a thing. In some ways they come and go.
They rise and fall in status as other pastries and confections become more popular. But I think cupcakes are probably here to stay, right? So it wasn't until episode 655 of the show when we first talked about cupcakes. It's been a while. It's been a couple of thousand days.
And we've got a high standard here because there are cupcakes and then there are next level cupcakes. These are some next level cupcakes I'm gonna tell you about. As I said, they cost 20 bucks each. You might think, well, that's terrible. That's expensive.
What does the world come to these days with inflation? But actually these cupcakes are a work of art. They are designed and baked with a custom image of you or a celebrity or a brand. And the cool thing is I noted in the title, first line of this episode, the couple that runs this project met on Tinder. So their tagline is, "We're not New York's typical cupcake bakery." They've worked with clients such as Nike, Adidas, and more.
It's a very profitable business, as you might imagine. So let's talk more about the idea, how they made it happen. The $20 cupcake Tinder matched couple swipes right to sell cupcakes. That's the episode coming right up. [Music]
Side hustles come in all shapes and sizes.
And now thanks to Carolina Wang and Benny Lena, they come in different cupcake flavors too. Carolina is an active wear designer who loves the sense of fashion and design. Colors, patterns, shapes, textures, they all have their own meaning just waiting to be harnessed for a purpose. She started making her own costumes at the age of 12. Her passion segued into a bachelor's degree in textiles.
And then she worked as a tech designer for brands like Under Armour, SoulCycle, and Kenneth Cole. Now her work, her day job is still fulfilling, but Carolina craved another outlet for her creativity, where she could have even more fun with color and texture. Something a little sweeter than her day to day life. Well, she eventually found it thanks to a fateful Tinder swipe that matched her with her now boyfriend, Benny. After a few dates and long walks through Central Park, he told Carolina about his vision of creating a brand that combined food, art, fashion, and pop culture into one package.
Carolina and Benny started with a selfie cupcake where they used icing and some very clever printing techniques to bake cupcakes with faces of celebrities on them. Not only did these cupcakes taste good, but they looked great on their Instagram feeds. Posting images was free, it was easy. And most importantly, their target audience spent a lot of time online too. It was the perfect mix.
They called the business Eat Good. It took them about four months of making selfie cupcakes, along with a moment of great timing before they saw the side of success. Since they were putting celebrity faces on their cupcakes, it made sense to try and get one of their products spotted in the hands of said celebrity. This is easier said than done, of course, since you can't just mail food to strangers or you probably shouldn't. But Carolina had heard that Cara Delevingne, a model and actress, was at a nearby Sephora.
She quickly iced up her nearest cupcake with Cara's image and Benny ran uptown to try and get it to her. One celebrity selfie amidst a massive paparazzi later and Eat Good was an overnight success. Three years later, that's right, it's been three years, Carolina and Benny have grown their hustle into one of New York City's most unique bakeries with features by Vogue, The New Yorker, and more. Well, of course, now Side Hustle School. And their clients include Nike, Adidas, and Madison Square Garden.
But how did one Tinder match? A few months of after work side hustling and hundreds of cupcakes become a business, a true business with more than 13,000 Instagram followers, probably more by now, even making a batch of cupcakes for Beyonce's birthday. Well, again, those three years. Three years, an industrial strength kitchen and lots of hard work. Carolina and Benny started with just two to three orders a week.
At the time of our recording, they were getting three to four orders a day. These cupcakes aren't cheap. They can cost customers anywhere between $60 for a dozen, up to $180 for their specialty three-dimensional designs. And if buying fewer than a dozen of those specialty ones, they do in fact cost $20 each. But the money's good.
They're selling about 300 high-end cupcakes a week with cookies now coming in hot as their second bestseller, moving around a hundred to 200 a week. Every sale is delivered to the New York City area from the commercial kitchen they rent out. Their delivery radius is a challenge because it means they can only expand so much with their current side hustle model. And of course, the other challenge is being a two-person side hustle when both of them have nine to five jobs. Now, because their products are so design-oriented, Carolina applied a design principle to her pricing as well.
And I like this, she said, "When we were thinking about how much to charge for our cupcakes, we thought about the amount of time we spent designing them and the daily rates of artists. We hand-sculpt everything without any molds, so we definitely think of ourselves as creating art, which is what we always set out to do." Now, it also helps that customers come to them looking for more than just an average cupcake, which is also why they can maintain that pricing structure. It took them about six months to recoup their initial costs, and above all, Carolina says they wouldn't have had any of their success if they didn't understand their competition and what else was available in the market. Cupcakes aren't unique, but selfies, sneakers, and art designs on cupcakes are, and that's what their customers love them for. In today's visual culture, food isn't just for eating and art isn't just for museums.
Carolina and Benny combine the best of both for their super-sweet hustle, and now the sky's the limit. They're dipping into hard candy, mooncakes, and whatever else they dream up. Carolina says her next product won't be traditional. It will look amazing in photos. I think this is a great gift.
Like, I personally wouldn't pay $20 a cupcake just for myself, but if I was hosting a party or social gathering, I would definitely consider spending $100 on five of them, perhaps for friends or to celebrate somebody's birthday or accomplishment. In fact, over the years at my book events, a number of people have brought some really cool cupcakes, sometimes decorated with the design of my book or something else that's significant to the gathering. And so it's always a fun group experience to see that. So I can totally see how it's worth it in that context. And I think the next logical step when a project reaches this point is you gotta make some decisions.
And you have to say, okay, am I happy with it at this level? Do I wanna keep doing this? It sounds like it's a lot of work. Do I want to grow it? Do I want to go on Shark Tank and try to scale this business?
Or do I want to actually scale down the business? We've seen some people do that as well. Or is there a way to take this business and evolve it in a different direction to where I'm not making product all the time? Who knows? The whole point is you have options and you're not locked into any one particular path.
There's all kinds of reasons to have a side hustle. There's all kinds of benefits for it. So listeners, I hope you will take action today. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. The $20 cupcake has been done, but there's something you can do.
And I hope you'll continue to listen as well. New episodes come out every day. It's always free. Listen wherever you get your shows. My name's Chris Guillebeau.
You're listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
