Candace Nelson

She is married to Charles Nelson. Initially the couple worked as investment bankers. When Candace started her endeavor in the cupcakes business, her husband supported her in every way and continues to assist with the opening and running of ‘Sprinkles’.

The ‘Sprinkles’ franchise is dedicated to using the freshest and best ingredients, which has provided many other stores with inspiration to do the same. The cupcake store is so insistent on top quality that it uses ‘Nielsen-Massey Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla’, which is priced at over 100 dollars a gallon.

They pioneered a trend in the bakery industry with their delicious cupcakes. Once Sprinkles gained popularity it garnered the attention of many business enthusiasts and copycats began appearing everywhere.

The cupcake queen was born on May 8, 1974. She spent most of her childhood growing up in Indonesia.

She soon moved to the United States to attend high school. In 1996, she graduated from ‘Wesleyan University’ and took up a career in investment banking.

In 2002, she graduated from the professional pastry program offered at ‘Tante Marie’s Cooking School’ in San Francisco. This was a major turning point in her life, where she found her passion in creating her famous cupcakes.

Before her cupcakes became famous, she worked as an Oklahoma investment banker. The dot-com bust, however, collapsed her banking career and she was left jobless. At the time, she decided to turn her focus to baking.

In 2005, her first cupcake bakery, ‘Sprinkles’, was opened in Beverly Hills, California. She was an instant success and within the first few days of opening, her stocks sold out every day. Within no time, she was selling up to 1,000 cupcakes a day.

By 2006, another ‘Sprinkles’bakery was opened in Newport Beach. The exquisite cakes were beginning to attract the attention of notable legends like Barbara Streisand and Oprah Winfrey.

In 2010, she was offered a position as a judge in the hit television series ‘Cupcake Wars’. The show invites bakers from all over the nation to create the most tasteful themed cupcakes and the judges award the winning team with $10,000. The show is still on-air.

She creatively designed the world’s first Cupcake ATM, in 2012. Catering to Sprinkles addicts on the go, this machine is restocked with fresh cupcakes and cookies throughout the day and night. The machine is open 24 hours a day.

The most notable work of her career was the opening of the very first ‘Sprinkles’store in 2005. This amazing entrepreneur worked seven days a week, getting a meager two hours of sleep at night and even sometimes sleeping on the floor of the bakery. Candace and her husband’s dedication set off a cupcake craze throughout the country.