The Closure of Sprinkles Cupcakes and How I Feel About It

If you haven’t heard, Sprinkles Cupcakes immediately closed all store locations and their cupcake ATMs. The last day all stores and cupcake ATMs were open was on December 31, 2025. You can read a news article about the closure of Sprinkles Cupcakes here. (The article is from ABC 15, an Arizona based ABC affiliate. It talks specifically about the Arizona Sprinkles Cupcakes location, but it gives a good, overall explanation about what is known about Sprinkle’s closure.)

Sprinkles Cupcakes was started by Candice Nelson. It opened in April 2005 in Beverly Hills, California. It was a very popular bakery that specialized in, as the name suggests, cupcakes. It had celebrity fans and created something called a “cupcake ATM”, which is a vending machine that would sell cupcakes after the bakeries closed for the day. Candice would eventually sell the business in 2012 to a private equity firm.

Ever since I heard about Sprinkles Cupcake in the 2000’s, I wanted to try one of their cupcake. I had a chance to eat a piece of one, and it was pretty good. Even though I wasn’t a huge fan of Sprinkles Cupcakes, it’s closure has been a really big surprise to me. I thought business was doing well!

To be honest, I am surprised by how upset I feel about the news. I’m clearly not a huge fan of Sprinkles Cupcakes, yet it is upsetting to me. I remember when Sprinkles made the news because of their cupcakes. People around me at that time would complain about how impractical for a business and how it would fail. It did close, but 20 years after it opened. The fact it survived this long is something that makes me happy whenever I feel down about businesses failing. Of course, the boost of a celebrity client base and the notoriety from it did help. Yet, it isn’t a flat out guarantee it will succeed.

Anyway, I’m feeling down that Sprinkles Cupcakes has closed. Now that their famous cupcakes cannot be purchased in store, my hut begins for at home recipes! Fortunately, Candice Nelson released a recipe book called The Sprinkles Baking Book in 2016. It includes “secrets for making 50 beloved Sprinkles Cupcakes”. Still, I want to also know if there are any inspired recipes online.

That’s all for now!  Thank you for reading!

Featured Image Stock Photo by Amy Hirschi on Unsplash. Edited for this post by me.