Georgetown Cupcake owners: "Our business plan was obsolete on day one"

From a U.S. News & World Report interview with Georgetown Cupcake Katherine Kallinis and Sophie LaMontagne, whose cookbook The Cupcake Diaries comes out in November.

Did you make any financial mistakes along the way?

Tons. We probably started way too small, but that was all we could afford at the time. We spent a lot of money rebuilding things. We were undershooting every single time. We did our kitchen three or four times in the first location, and finally moved to M Street, trying to keep up with demand. If we had planned that from the get-go, we wouldn’t have wasted all that money.

Did you create an official business plan before launching?

We did. I used to work in venture capital, so I’m used to working with start-ups and know the importance of a business plan. We drew up a rough business plan. But I also learned that your business plan goes out the window and doesn’t necessarily go how you think it will. So we drew one up for initial planning. We were very conservative in our projections, and we thought our business would be mostly special event orders, for baby showers and weddings, with little walk-in traffic. We didn’t plan on the walk-in traffic.

On the first day, we said, ‘We’ll bake 500 cupcakes.’ We ended up selling out in a couple hours, and now we bake 10,000 cupcakes a day. We couldn’t have predicted that. Our business plan became obsolete on day one. So it’s not about planning but about how you adjust to changes. The people who do well are the ones who will adjust.

Kate Gosselin shoots Kate Plus 8 for TLC at Georgetown Cupcake, plus a cupcake engagement ring, dragon sculpture and more

Georgetown Cupcake, which also has its own TLC reality show DC Cupcakes, gets a visit from Kate Gosselin as she tapes Kate Plus 8:



From Los Angeles Times blog Ministry of Gossip:

With her guydar going off through the window of Georgetown Cupcake, where an episode of "Kate Plus 8" was being taped, mama Gosselin enlisted help to rope in that cute man on the street -- so she could tempt him with a pretty little cupcake.

Speaking of DC Cupcakes, here are some photos from Season 2, via the TLC website.


an engagement ring for Georgetown Cupcakes' Katherine Kallinis



dragon cupcake sculpture



at a tattoo convention



with the Girl Scouts