SMALL PRINT:DAVID ARRICK isn't happy – Jennifer Lopez wants him to service her but he just hasn't the time. "J-Lo was on the phone today, she wanted to place an order for cup cakes as a birthday present for her husband, Marc Anthony," says Arrick. "But the way this business has been growing over the last few months we simply haven't the supply to meet the demand. It's crazy. Who thought masculine cup cakes could be so popular?"
Arrick is founder and owner of New York’s Butch Bakery – a company that makes rugged slabs of loveliness for men, with no pink, frilly bits in sight. These are “Man Cakes for Manly Men” and are flying out of Arrick’s bakery as quick as he can bake them.
Arrick is not your natural baker type. He was a Wall St lawyer until the recession hit and he lost his job and re-invented himself through cupcakes.
“I remember walking around New York just after I lost my job and the only retail outlets that had people standing in line outside them were cupcake shops,” he says. “And the only new shops that were opening were even more cupcake shops. I just thought ‘Where’s the boy bakery – where men can go and get cupcakes without having to deal with feminine and pink cakes?’ I got together with a bunch of bakers to try out a few recipes.
“First, I made the cupcake about one third larger than usual; a good masculine size. Then I came up with very different ingredients so now we have bestsellers such as The Sidecar – a brandy-soaked lemon cake with an orange and white chocolate ganache filling – and The Driller, which is a maple cake topped with crumbled bacon and filled with milk chocolate ganache.”
The Butch Bakery opened in November 2009 and sells 750 cakes a week. It’s an online business (butchbakery.com) delivering to New York for now, but “there are already franchise enquiries from Europe which I’m looking into” he says.
Ninety per cent of Arrick’s clientele are women. “It is surprising but then we are the perfect answer to the question of what to get a guy for his birthday. A tie or cufflinks just don’t cut it anymore”.
A New York shop will soon be up and running – “It’s not going to look like a traditional cupcake shop, it’s going to look like a manly construction site,” he says. The opening of the shop is being timed to coincide with a reality TV show which will detail the company’s expansion, including a Butch Bakery cupcake cookbook.
“I think there’s more to this than cupcakes,” says Arrick. “I want to develop a whole new masculine baking brand.”
– Brian Boyd
