Sprinkles Cupcakes Finally Bows Out, Cupcake ATM Left To Cry Alone

KEY POINTS

•Candace Nelson, Sprinkles’ cofounder, announced the bakery’s closure across 21 stores in 7 states on Wednesday.
•Nelson sold the company in 2012 to private-equity firm KarpReilly, which later removed Sprinkles from its holdings.
•The company was famed for its 25 cupcake ATMs nationwide but now faces shutdown amid unclear ownership status.

In a plot twist as surprising as a calorie-free cupcake, Sprinkles Cupcakes announced its closures this Wednesday, crushing the dreams of over 1,000 employees and cupcake ATM enthusiasts nationwide. Founded in 2005 by Candace Nelson and her husband, Sprinkles once innovated the cupcake ATM in 2012 — yes, cupcakes dispensed like cash, because regular bakeries are too mainstream. Sold to KarpReilly private equity in 2012, the company operated 21 stores across 7 states and 25 ATM-style dispensaries in airports and malls, which now risk becoming the saddest dispenser of stale dreams. Nelson, who has long since moved on to pizza startups and entrepreneurial books, lamented the closure as surreal, admitting this wasn’t the legacy she baked up. With KarpReilly mysteriously deleting Sprinkles from its holdings in late 2023 and ignoring messages like a ghosted text, the cupcake empire crumbled—making Sprinkles one of the last casualties of the 2000s cupcake gold rush, just behind Crumbs’ delivery-only reboot attempts. The cupcake craze is officially over; time to invest in avocado toast again.