Last April, Y&H interviewed Cake Love‘s Warren Brown about how the District’s first gourmet cupcake seller was dealing with all the new competition in town. Brown defended his prices (cupcakes cost $3.25 at Cake Love—-50 cents more than rival retailer Georgetown Cupcake, for instance) by citing some recent price studies he’d conducted of his competitors. Generally speaking, Brown asserted that “other places that have them for less money have a much smaller cupcake.” On visual inspection, at least, Brown seemed to have a point.
Y&H recently decided to conduct its own price study to see which D.C. sweet seller offered the most cupcake for your buck. The mission: buy one basic-style cupcake from each high-end shop in town, weigh each one of them on the same digital scale and then tally up the price per ounce in order to obtain a more scientific comparison.
Here’s what we found. The best deal in terms of size: Baked & Wired, where you’re paying around $0.64 per ounce of the sweet stuff. That is to say, you’re getting about an ounce and a half of cupcake for every dollar you spend. Compare that to the worst deal, at Georgetown Cupcake, which charges about $1.38 per ounce, meaning you’re getting less than ounce of cake—-about three quarters, in fact—-for every dollar.
Check out the complete breakdown of the results of our sugary experiment after the jump:
Location: Baked and Wired
Cupcake: chocolate w/ buttercream frosting
Cost: $3.50
Weight: 5.5
Price per ounce: $0.63
Location: Sticky Fingers
Flavor: red velvet
Cost: $2.25
Weight: 3.2 oz.
Price per ounce: $0.70
Location: Crumbs
Flavor: chocolate w/ butter cream frosting
Cost: $4.50
Weight: 6.1 oz.
Price per ounce: $0.74
Location: Curbside Cupcake
Flavor: Red velvet
Cost: $3.00
Weight: 3.6 oz.
Price per ounce: $0.83
Location: Hello Cupcake
Flavor: chocolate w/ buttercream frosting
Cost: $3.00
Weight: 3.6 oz.
Price per ounce: $0.83
Location: Olivia’s Cupcakes
Flavor: chocolate w/ buttercream frosting
Cost: $2.00
Weight: 2.2 oz.
Price per ounce: $0.91
Location: The Sweet Lobby
Flavor: red velvet
Cost: $2.75
Weight: 3 oz.
Price per ounce: $0.92
Location: Red Velvet Cupcakery
Flavor: chocolate w/ buttercream frosting
Cost: $3.25
Weight: 3.2 oz.
Price per ounce: $1.02
Location: Something Sweet
Flavor: red velvet
Cost: $3.25
Weight: 3.2 oz.
Price per ounce: $1.02
Location: Cake Love
Flavor: chocolate w/ buttercream frosting
Cost: $3.25
Weight: 2.8 oz.
Price per ounce: $1.16
Location: Sprinkles
Flavor: chocolate w/ buttercream frosting
Cost: $3.50
Weight: 3 oz.
Price per ounce: $1.17
Location: Georgetown Cupcake
Flavor: chocolate w/ buttercream frosting
Cost: $2.75
Weight: 2 oz.
Price per ounce: $1.38
Illustration by Brooke Hatfield