Ranked as one of the top 10 cupcake shops in the country, The Cupcake Collection has sold five million cupcakes since founder Mignon Francois launched the business in 2008. That’s no small feat for a woman who didn’t even know how to bake.
Today, she has a shop in Historic Germantown, as well as one in New Orleans and her brand has garnered national attention from Business Insider, Food Network, Cooking Channel, and more.
CUPCAKE CATALYST
I heard a financial guru on the radio telling people they could get out of debt by having a bake sale or a garage sale. So, I decided to have a bake sale every single day. The problem was I didn’t know how to bake. I had two daughters who were 10 and 16 at the time that were great bakers. However, my 16-year-old let me know the plan I had for her life was not the plan she had for her own. She told me she was going back to New Orleans upon graduation. Without her big sister, my 10-year-old lost interest in mom’s little ‘bakery idea.’ So I had to pull out my secret ingredient—my grandmother. She taught me how to bake over the phone. From there I would practice baking and give them to my neighbors, real estate agents, and developers as ‘welcome to the neighborhood’ gifts. One day I was sitting in the dark in the back of my house budgeting what little money we had for necessities when my neighbor came and knocked on the door. She had an order for 600 cupcakes to give to her clients for the holidays and all I had was $5 left to feed the family. She knew I couldn’t bake all of them at one time so I took the $5 and walked to the Kroger on 8th and Monroe and bought what I could with that $5. I turned that $5 into $60 that day and that $60 into $600 by the end of the week. I have been flipping that same $5 into a tune of over 5 million cupcakes sold.
STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS IN A PINCH
When we were unable to open our doors due to the destruction around us in Germantown this spring, our friends at Taziki’s Mediterranean Café stepped in to support us. The Cupcake Collection is now carried at nine Taziki’s Mediterranean locations in Middle Tennessee. Our customer base in Franklin, Mt. Juilet, Hendersonville, and Brentwood now have an easier way to access us.
POWER OF POSITIVITY
I encourage my team to speak what you seek until you see what you have said. The Bible says, ‘the power of life and death lies in your tongue,’ so we don’t speak negatively at The Cupcake Collection. We have adopted speaking positive about every situation that we face by finishing every statement with ‘and that’s just the way I want it.’ If you can’t finish a sentence with that phrase, then you aren’t allowed to say it.
ALL ABOUT THE MISSION
At The Cupcake Collection our mission is to be a lighthouse in the community to serve as an example of what good business looks like. As an entrepreneur, I am a community cheerleader at heart. I am adamant about using my platform to promote financial freedom, ownership, and independence through entrepreneurship. I sit on boards at the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corporation, the Entrepreneur Center, Pathways Women’s Business Center, Lipscomb University’s College of Business and I am a founding member of Nashville Business Journal’s Leadership and Trust team. There is even a Cupcake Collection scholarship at a local university that supports budding entrepreneurs.
WOMAN TO WOMAN
Don’t discount yourself. As women, one of the greatest mistakes we make is not giving ourselves enough credit for what we know. There are so many life experiences that add to the gumbo of what we have our hands involved in.