New bakery is bringing a big-city trend to Chesapeake

CHESAPEAKE

Inside the glass display case, the individually wrapped delicacies come in vibrant colors and carry names as tantalizing as they look: Espresso Royale. Piña Colada. Ho-Ho Heaven. Cookies ’n’ Cream. Habanero Hottie.

These are cupcakes. Ornately decorated, meticulously frosted cupcakes. Just cupcakes.

Chesapeake native and lifelong baker Dawn Eskins opened Carolina Cupcakery last month in the Edinburgh Commons shopping plaza off Hillcrest Parkway. With her creative concoctions, she has brought to Hampton Roads a retail concept that other cities have savored for years.

Call it cupcake chic. It’s all about one product – albeit in different forms and flavors.

And locals are taking their first bite of the trend. Curious shoppers wander into the Cupcakery and wonder at its precise merchandise. “Just cupcakes?” they often ask.

“Absolutely,” answers Eskins, a graphic designer by trade. “But it’s every kind of dessert you can think of, morphed into a cupcake.”

In its first three weeks, Eskins said, the business has exceeded her expectations. Now living in Camden, N.C., and partnering with her two college-student daughters, Eskins earned enough money in her first three days to cover her shop’s monthly rent, she said.

Connie Raymond and Sherry Hamilton came to check out the business last week. The Great Bridge residents sampled several cupcakes, and Raymond pledged to bring her grandchildren back that night.

“I already love this place,” she said. “I wish I thought of it.”

Some customers already have become regulars. The Cupcakery has a Baker’s Dozen card, offering the 12th cupcake free, and Jenny Batten-Shinabarger had eaten her way through four cards as of Thursday.

“We’re addicted, and my whole family comes here,” Batten-Shinabarger said as she ate a s’mores cupcake and held a chocolate with buttercream to take home. She used to bake her own, she said. “It saves me from having to actually do it.”

Such a specialty carries a price. The gourmet cupcakes cost $3.50 each or a dozen for $38.50. Customers can choose a single chocolate or vanilla cake for $2.50 to decorate themselves. Bulk options include a kid’s dozen of smaller cupcakes for $15 or a party box of unfrosted desserts that includes spatulas, frosting and sprinkles for $19.95.

As with many major metropolitan trends, the cupcake craze took awhile to make its way to Hampton Roads. The movement launched when Magnolia Bakery opened in New York City in 1996. Within a few years, cake-seeking customers lined the sidewalk well past midnight to get their fix of the cafe’s confections.

Magnolia’s popularity reached a pinnacle with appearances in the HBO series “Sex and the City” and a “Saturday Night Live” sketch. It spawned dozens of imitators nationwide. Beverly Hills, Calif., has Sprinkles Cupcakes. The Washington, D.C., area has CakeLove.

Whether the cupcake-centric retail concept can translate to the tastes of Hampton Roads remains in question, even to Eskins. The challenge, as she sees it, is to shift the cupcake sensibility from the urban to the suburban.

Big-city bakeries benefit from a large population. Fast-moving urban dwellers sometimes pay others for their food instead of taking the time to whip up desserts .

Hampton Roads still embraces the do-it-yourself mentality when it comes to baked goods, said Mary Wymer, who has owned Naas Bakery in Norfolk for 11 years. “Traditionally, they’ve done their own baking,” she said of local dessert eaters.

Eskins tries to offer a homemade-style alternative and bakes only from scratch, despite warnings that she couldn’t afford the time or cost. In family-oriented Hampton Roads, she aims to appeal to parents seeking a source of treats for birthday or classroom parties that doesn’t come from a freezer or a box.

“We were all raised with baking,” Eskins said of her family. “We never had junk food in the house, so if we wanted junk food, we had to bake.”

Gerald Divaris, a local retail real estate guru and close watcher of shopping trends, recently visited London and noticed a long line outside a bakery. The cause of all the fuss? Cupcakes.

He said he isn’t sure such a single-minded store can survive in this region. “You need to have some diversity and variety,” he said.

Eskins, 45, isn’t too strict about the cupcake-only concept. She offers muffins in the morning and plans to expand her breakfast options to bagels and “quiche in a cup.”

She also carries gluten-free and sugar-free cupcake options and “pupcakes” for canines. The gourmet menu rotates daily. Shelves hold nonedible cupcake paraphernalia such as T-shirts and Cup-a-Cake carriers that won’t crush the dessert.

“It just has been evolving,” Eskins said. “You can do a pie in a cupcake. You can do peanut butter and jelly in a cupcake.”