Baked by Melissa is a chain of

bakeries A bakery is an establishment that produces and sells flour-based food baked in an oven such as bread, cookies, cakes, donuts, pastries, and pies. Some retail bakeries are also categorized as cafés, serving coffee and tea to customers who wish ...

founded by Melissa Ben-Ishay in 2008, specializing in "bite-size" miniature

cupcakes A cupcake (also British English: fairy cake; Hiberno-English: bun) is a small cake designed to serve one person, which may be baked in a small thin paper or aluminum cup. As with larger cakes, frosting and other cake decorations such as frui ...

. As of 2024, Baked by Melissa has 14 locations in the

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

metropolitan area and

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

History

Baked by Melissa was founded when Melissa Ben-Ishay lost her job in advertising in 2008. She went to her brother's office, and he told her it was the best thing that had ever happened to her before telling her to go home and bake her cupcakes. Melissa went to the grocery store near her Murray Hill apartment to get flavor inspiration, then sent the cupcakes to work with her best friend's sister who was interning at Alison Brod PR. That afternoon, Melissa got a call from Brod’s caterer, who became one of the co-founders. Initially, the company baked and sold cupcakes through

catering Catering is the business of providing food service at a remote site or a site such as a hotel, hospital, pub, aircraft, cruise ship, park, festival, filming location or film studio. History of catering The earliest account of major services be ...

companies. Melissa baked all of the cupcakes in her apartment until November 2008, when she moved into the basement of Cafe Bari. That winter, she sold the cupcakes at holiday markets around New York, selling out every day. The first Baked by Melissa location opened on March 9, 2009; it was a pop-up window at Cafe Bari in

SoHo, Manhattan SoHo, sometimes written Soho (South of Houston Street), is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Since the 1970s, the neighborhood has been the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, and has also been known for its variet ...

. The same year, Florence Fabricant said that Baked by Melissa “seems to have succeeded at the near-impossible challenge of finding something new to do with cupcakes.” In 2015, Melissa wrote her first cookbook, ''Cakes by Melissa'', published by the William Morrow imprint of

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Cor ...

. Her second cookbook, ''Come Hungry: Salads, Meals, and Sweets for People Who Live to Eat'', was released in January 2024. Melissa’s brother Brian Bushell was the CEO of Baked by Melissa until 2015. Melissa was named CEO on December 5, 2019. In 2017, the company gave away 150,000 cupcakes in a project called Side With Love; people in the US could send a box of 25 cupcakes free of charge. The initiative was nominated for a

Shorty Award The Shorty Awards (also known as “The Shortys”) honors the most innovative work globally in digital and social media by brands, agencies, nonprofits and creators. The Shortys’ mission is to celebrate, inspire and push the boundaries of exce ...

for its impact on social media. In 2018, Baked by Melissa created a special cupcake, which was sold in support of the

Make-A-Wish The Make-A-Wish Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in the United States that helps fulfill the wishes of children with a critical illness between the ages of and 18 years old. Make-A-Wish was founded in 1980 and headquart ...

Foundation.

On social media

In 2021, Melissa went viral after posting a Green Goddess Salad to the Baked by Melissa

TikTok TikTok, known in China as Douyin (), is a short-form video hosting service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 15 seconds to 10 minutes. TikTok is an international version ...

account. As of January 2024, the video has 25.1 million views and became the #6 top recipe on

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

in 2022. Melissa has said that she doesn't follow a social media strategy, she responds to what her community wants to see.

Locations

As of 2024, Baked by Melissa has 14 stores in the New York metropolitan area and Boston. Its first full store opened in 2009 in

Union Square Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Un ...

, Manhattan. Many of the stores offer customers the opportunity to pick their own flavors, with bite-size cupcakes displayed in a pastry case. The company ships its products nationwide, all made in its bakery in

North Bergen, New Jersey North Bergen is a township in the northern part of Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the township had a total population of 63,361. The township was founded in 1843. It was much diminished in territory by a ...

References

Bakeries of New York (state) 2008 establishments in New York City {{Food-company-stub