Putting the icing on the cupcake bubble

Is there any limit to America’s obsession with the cupcake? asked Peter Lattman in NYTimes.com. Jason and Mia Bauer don’t think so. Their 8-year-old Crumbs Bake Shop is poised to become the first publicly traded gourmet cupcake maker, following its $66 million merger with 57th Street General Acquisition Corp., a publicly traded investment company. Crumbs, which operates 34 stores in six states stretching from California to Virginia, had revenue of about $31 million last year on sales of about 13 million cupcakes.

Skeptics question the timing of the deal, contending that the cupcake craze has run its course. But Jason Bauer is unfazed by such doubts. “If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me if cupcakes were a fad,” he says, “I wouldn’t need to do this deal.”