At noon on Wednesday, UCLA will be invaded by cupcakes.
Sprinkles founder and Chief Executive Charles Nelson will come to the Kerckhoff Grand Salon to speak about how he and his wife built their dessert empire, bringing free cupcakes to the first 100 attendees.
The Daily Bruin’s Josh Wasbin spoke with Nelson about the history of the popular chain.
Daily Bruin: When did you start Sprinkles Cupcakes and with whom?
Charles Nelson: We started Sprinkles on April 13, 2005. The only partners are my wife, Candace, and myself. She’s the pastry chef.
We were both former investment bankers. We did corporate finance in San Francisco.
After the dot-com bust, my wife went to pastry school. We started a cake business. We moved to L.A. to open this business and worked on the concept from scratch.
DB: Was there any competition in making cupcakes as such?
CN: People were just doing cupcakes in vanilla, chocolate, etc. Nobody was making using the best flavors. Nobody was using quality ingredients.
DB: Why are you visiting UCLA?
CN: Campus Events Commission asked us to talk about starting a small business. Starting a small business has so many challenges.
You have concept creation, building your business up. The fact of the matter is the majority of companies in America are small businesses.
DB: What sort of challenges are you referring to?
CN: When you start your own business, there’s no blueprint. You have no personnel, no trademark protection, there’s no one to look to.
There’s no one telling you what to do. … I think there are challenges every day.
I’m the president of the company; we have to set our challenges every month, every quarter, every year. Business is more about how you deal with those challenges.
DB: What’s your most popular flavor?
CN: Red Velvet. It’s our signature cupcake. It’s a light chocolate style with cream-cheese frosting.
DB: Do you still enjoy the cupcakes you make?
CN: My wife and I still eat cupcakes every day; believe it or not, we love cupcakes, we love dessert. We eat every flavor that we have.
DB: What’s your favorite cupcake?
CN: Black and White (Belgian dark chocolate cake with vanilla frosting).
DB: How many flavors do you have?
CN: We have 45 flavors.
DB: On your menu you have something called Frosting Shots. How did you come up with the idea for Frosting Shots?
CN: A lot of people loved cupcakes for what we call the high frosting to cake ratio. For those people, we created the frosting shot.
DB: Why do you think cupcakes are such a popular item in L.A.?
CN: There’s a popular reason ““ people love cake, the portability and individuality of what people can do with a cupcake.
There wasn’t much for people to rally around before with cupcakes. … They didn’t use the best ingredients. It’s a time of a lot of turmoil ““ comfort.