As the real estate market soured over the past few years, Laura Condrey and Laurie Blakey decided to leave their realty practice behind and start a new business.

So they opened Pearl’s Cupcake Shoppe in March 2010, settling into the Libbie and Grove area of Richmond’s West End.

Blakey said they weren’t worried about starting up a business during the midst of a punishing recession.

“We weren’t nervous; not at all,” she said. “We looked at price points, and at $3 or less people can get a treat without feeling like they are being extravagant.”

The cupcake craze swept New York, Washington, D.C. and other big cities in the middle of the 2000s, launched in part by “Sex and the City.” The trend was a little slower getting to Richmond, but today there are at least five cupcake bakeries operating in the area. Most are less than four years old.

Today Pearl’s has a staff of 14, half of whom are full-time bakers and decorators. Condrey oversees most of the day-to-day baking operations, while Blakey handles sales and development, along with things like bookkeeping and taxes.

Right now the shop’s business is split about 50-50 between smaller, retail orders and large purchases for events or outside vendors like Mosaic, a café and catering company located in the River Road Shopping Center.

“The retail business through the front door creates demand for the special orders that go out the back door,” Blakey said.

Unlike the owners of Pearl’s, Dawn Schick came to cupcakes after years as a personal chef and caterer in Richmond and Fredericksburg. She and her husband, Albert, moved here eight years ago to run the Grace Manor Inn, a bed and breakfast in the city’s Fan District.

In Fredericksburg she made a week’s worth of meals for families, then delivered them. She branched into catering after moving to Richmond, only to see business start to dry up when the recession took hold.

“We’d go to New York and always be amazed that people were lined up outside of these cupcake bakeries,” Schick said. “It’s food that everyone could afford.”

The couple looked into a bakery a few different time, but on each occasion they backed off because the details weren’t working out. With the B&B and catering businesses doing well, there wasn’t much incentive to shake things up.

As the catering business slowed, though, the Schicks were talking to a friend that owned a building in Carytown. The friend thought that space would be perfect for a small bakery. A light-bulb went off, Dawn said, and Carytown Cupcakes opened its doors in October 2009.
“We took a leap of faith and started the business,” she said. “It’s grown every month since then, and we think we are really perfecting what we do.”

The shop keeps a case of classic flavors available year-round, but the second case has a theme each week. This week it’s “end of summer,” featuring piña colada, watermelon, chocolate banana, strawberry kiwi and mango coconut lime. Schick said the rotating themes keep the staff fresh and “on their toes.”

“It keeps people coming back and means we’re doing something new every week,” she added.
The cupcake craze is so strong that Carytown has two cupcake shops. Babycakes, which started as a home-based bakery in 2008, moved into a storefront at Cary Street and Crenshaw Ave. in August 2010.

The Short Pump area also has a pair of stores: Too Sweet on Lauderdale Drive and Frostings in Short Pump Station off Broad Street. Like Schick, Frostings owner Matthew Fraker was inspired to open his bakery after seeing New York’s endless array of “cupcakeries.” He left a career in teaching to launch the bakery.

Both Pearl’s and Carytown think the coming months will bring additional growth. Pearl’s recently started opening at 7:30 a.m. for breakfast, serving muffins, scones and frittatas (author’s note: All sound good, but why not just have a cupcake and coffee for breakfast).

Schick said she want to focus on building her corporate and large-order business.

“We do about 48 dozen cupcakes on a normal day, and big orders can add up to 25 or 30 dozen more on top of that. So it really ramps up the business,” she said. Right now it’s inconsistent, but we’re getting more and more as time goes along.”