Pour one out or lick the frosting knife for Sprinkles Cupcakes. The OG designer cupcake empire. The place that made paying $5 for a tiny cake feel aspirational instead of unhinged. Closed. Finito. Crumbs on the counter. Employees jobless and without a severance.

And yes, businesses close all the time. That’s capitalism, baby. But what sent me into a full ugly cry spiral was Candace Nelson, the Sprinkles founder and cupcake queen herself, asking people to share their favorite Sprinkles memories because she thought they’d last forever.

Forever.

Sprinkles didn’t just sell cupcakes. They sold vibes. They sold the feeling of being a little fancy at 3 p.m. on a Friday. They sold celebration in a box. Pink branding before pink branding was everywhere. And let’s be clear, the cupcake ATM was a marketing hall of fame genius. A machine that dispensed joy.

Before I moved to Dallas, anytime I drove through the city, I made a point to stop at Sprinkles. It wasn’t optional. It was part of the route. Part of the ritual. You didn’t just pass through without grabbing a cupcake, because Sprinkles made the city feel sweeter than it actually was.

And if I were to put my marketing hat on, I’d say OG Sprinkles under Nelson, was an industry case study in doing it right.

They nailed:

• Branding: Instantly recognizable visual identity, cohesive tone, and a brand world that felt premium but playful. You knew it was Sprinkles before you even saw the logo.
• Experience: The retail space, packaging, and rituals turned a simple purchase into an event. They understood that people were buying a moment, not just a little cupcake.
• Innovation: The cupcake ATM was experiential marketing before brands were calling it that. It created earned media, buzz, and lines without buying a single billboard.
• Cultural Timing: They rode the early wave of Instagrammability and lifestyle branding without forcing it. The product photographed well because the brand was designed that way.

They didn’t just market cupcakes. They engineered desire. Playfulness. Joy.

But here’s the part no one should be shocked by. Once private equity entered the chat, the magic started leaking out.

Private equity doesn’t buy forever.
Private equity buys potential, strips it for parts, optimizes the soul out of it, only to then ask why the vibes aren’t vibing anymore.

Costs get cut. Ingredients get cheaper. Expansion gets aggressive. The experience, the very thing people were paying for, gets flattened into a spreadsheet. Suddenly it’s not about delight, it’s about margins. And cupcakes do not love margins.

While it’s a little ironic to ask people for nostalgic memories of a brand that was being hollowed out in real time, Candace Nelson wasn’t wrong for selling. Not even a little. She built something iconic. She took the risk. She did the work. Founders are allowed to cash out. Full stop. The problem is not her success. The problem is a system that rarely knows how to protect what made a brand special once it’s no longer founder led.

Sprinkles was cute. It was smart. It was culturally relevant. It mattered more than it should have because it understood something most brands still don’t. People are not buying products. They are buying feelings.

And honestly, I hope it makes a comeback. I hope someone revives it with taste, restraint, and respect for what worked.

Maybe some brands aren’t meant to last forever. But they are meant to be remembered for getting it right.

And Sprinkles, for a while, absolutely did.