Cupcakes Are the New Black shirt in Toys-r-Us

Just an hour or so after my conversation with Andrew Twigg, co-owner of Pittsburgh’s five-store Dozen Bake Shop chain, I was in Toys-r-Us, never mind why.  I walked past a display notifying me that “Cupcakes are the New Black”.  Funny thing is, I had already become convinced of this after meeting Andrew at his “flagship store” (his word) in Lawrenceville.

Right before Andrew sat down to have a chat with me, he begged my pardon so he could send a business-related text message.  Welcome to the 21^st Century.

When Andrew and his partner, James Gray, who, according to Andrew, was asleep at the time of my conversation with him, (at 2 PM, but this was, quite literally, none of my business) moved to Pittsburgh from Chicago, they found that “there were people looking for this kind of thing.”  As a transplant myself, I can personally attest to the validity of this claim.  I moved here ten years ago from a particularly Earthy-crunchy part of the New England seacoast, where one could always find a wide variety of independent café/bakery/breakfast joints, festooned with works by local artists, serving breads I’d never heard of (anadama, anyone?) and run by cosmetics-free women in comfortable shoes.  As the song goes, “You don’t miss your water / Till your well runs dry.”  I mean, Pamela’s was all right, but all that standing in line got old after a while.  As bad as they seemed at first, eventually, Denny’s and Eat’n Park didn’t look so bad after all – especially after our kids were born and standing in line was no longer an option.

Andrew says his Sunday brunches are “regularly packed.”  Oh well.  I guess I’d rather my kids refuse to eat my own cooking, anyway.

“Dozen,” in Andrew’s own words, is “making an effort to do something different” as their empire continues to expand.  Maintaining the formula that has brought them this far, they are continuing their emphasis on local purveyors, including a series of what Andrew termed “farm-to-table dinners”—prix-fixe, four-course, set-time-seating dinners comprised entirely of source ingredients from local farms.  A master-chef friend of mine, who has seen pretty much everything happen that there is to happen in the culinary world, says that he has seen many more failures than successes when those funky little independent café/bakery/breakfast joints try to turn themselves into dinner establishments; bearing this in mind, let’s all make a contribution to their success.  Learn more about the Farm Dinners here.

However, James and Andrew are not stopping there in their quest for uninterrupted lines of communication between the farm and the person eating their food.  They have already been using farm-fresh eggs.  Now, they’re even raising their own chickens.  Melissa, one of their bakers, has a farm in Butler County.  Andrew says they go through a lot of eggs.  (Understatement.)  So one can see that it wasn’t too much of a stretch for them to take the next step and invest in their own chickens.  I believe Andrew said they currently have a litter of nine set aside for their own purposes, although it will be, according to Melissa, “five to six months,” before they may begin to earn their keep.  An additional X-factor is that there is no way yet to discern the sexes of the chicks–if they end up with nine roosters, I guess it’s back to the proverbial drawing board….

Growing their own herbs (which Andrew says are difficult to source locally) and buying berry bushes may present an entirely different set of Pandora’s boxes to these cupcake trail-blazers; James and Andrew seem well-prepared to expect the unexpected.

Oh yes, the food.  After sampling one of their veggie pot pies, I may never heat one up out-of-the-freezer again, not even if it’s from the Earthy-crunchy section at Giant Eagle.  And even though I’m not much of a fan of sugar overload, I felt that I had to try a cupcake, too, so I acquiesced to my lifelong weakness for apple pie and tried one of their apple pie à la modes, and am happy that I decided to live dangerously.

And there’s even free wi-fi.  Enter the 21^st Century, no exit!

Andrew, designer and co-owner of Dozen Bake Shop in Pittsburgh

Where is this place?
Dozen Bake Shop (map)
3511 Butler Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15201
(412) 621-4740‎

Check out the Dozen Cupcakes location in Squirrel Hill (map) for $2 Tuesdays.

Chris Rosella

Chris moved from Boston to the Burgh about 10 years ago. He was raised a Steelers fan, but still sees Pittsburgh through the eyes of a visitor. He especially enjoys writing about music.

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