By Ivy Dai
Photographs by Eric Sueyoshi
Imagine biting into a light and tender chocolate cake, topped with creamy peanut butter frosting and a teensy peanut butter cup. It’s a cupcake like none other – so fluffy and scrumptious you can eat it in two bites. Maybe three if you pace yourself.
The creation of this particular pint-sized confection started two years ago, when Hyo Kwan bought a box of cupcakes for her coworkers from Sprinkles, a hugely popular cupcake chain based in Los Angeles. She included a personalized card for each person to show her appreciation. This small gift nearly brought people to tears.
[ad#336]
“You realize the power of a cupcake,” Kwan says, her eyes lighting up. “You validate their existence and it changes your whole relationship with them.”
After this sugar-inspired experience, Kwan discovered her destiny – to open a cupcake shop. The fact that she never baked a day in her life? No problem. She borrowed a KitchenAid mixer and fired up the oven. Today, the 29-year-old entrepreneur is now the owner of Dots, a small, frosting-pink gem in Pasadena, Calif.
The year-and-a-half-old cupcakery has a retro, space-age feel with an all-white interior, salon-style swivel chairs and a honeycomb cupcake display. Dots offers 22 varieties, including dulce de leche, pina colada, samoa, apple pie and chocobutter, the infamous chocolate cupcake with an explosive peanut butter frosting. Classics like chocolate and vanilla get a gourmet makeover with imported Valrhona chocolate and crushed vanilla beans. The cake is lighter than that of Sprinkles, and there’s just the right amount of frosting.
“You can have two [cupcakes] before you know it,” says customer David Bernstein, a personal trainer who swings by the shop when he’s in need of a “cheat.”
[ad#336]
For Kwan, who grew up in Hacienda Heights, Calif., the road to opening a cupcake shop was filled with baking classes and trial and error in the kitchen. She didn’t have any capital saved up, so she opened a dozen credit cards and used them to pay for more than $100,000 in expenses.
“You definitely have a fear that you’re going to be a failure, and you’re not going to succeed,” she says about the store’s opening. “I was always thinking, what’s my back-up plan? But I went into it knowing I was going to work hard and do whatever it takes.”
Then, right before the shop opened, Kwan’s father died of a heart attack. He was only 55. Life is short, she says, and you have to follow your dream. Dots was the American dream for Kwan and her family.
Each day, Kwan gets to work at 4 a.m. She goes through 1,500 pounds of sugar a week and pays more for chocolate than her monthly rent.
“I used to work 9 to 5. I struggled to wake up for every job I’ve had,” says Kwan, who was formerly an events manager for the Los Angeles Dodgers. “Now I’m never late to work.”
The kitchen is the size of a closet, and Kwan and the other bakers stand shoulder to shoulder, filling cupcake tins and frosting and baking nearly 5,000 cupcakes in four hours. Vertical racks and every surface of the shop are covered with cupcakes.
Kwan calls the shop her family, and takes her employees to lunch every day. A work ethic is one thing she can’t teach them, but so far they’ve been very loyal.
“It sounds corny, but they see a dream,” she says. “They see I’m here, and it inspires them to work hard.”
[ad#336]
The sweets boutique has recently whipped up the attention of magazines such as Bon Appetit, Bride & Bloom and InStyle for its whimsical cupcake trees, wedding favors and edible letter and flower toppers. For Rebecca Romijn and Jerry O’Connell’s rustic outdoor wedding, the bakery made mini country apple and red velvet cupcakes.
So far, Kwan has made enough profit to open a second shop. Twice the size of the first one, the second Dots shop will be located in the heart of Old Town Pasadena. It will open its doors later this fall.
Many people have asked Kwan to franchise, but she’s said no. Their hearts aren’t into it, she says.
“If you copy my dream, you won’t be successful,” she says. In her free time, Kwan attends food conventions and shops for ribbons. She’s excited about the custom-made cupcake boxes she just ordered, which are covered with polka dots.
“Money is not meaningful to me,” Kwan says. “But it has allowed me the freedom to do what I want to do. It allows me to buy every ribbon I want to buy, and allows me to be creative without having restrictions.”
For this dessert diva, money is just icing on the cake. Or cupcake, that is.
