How I Turned My Last $5 to $10,000,000

The Cupcake Collection has become a Nashville institution, and its founder Mignon Francois a local hero. She built a $10 million cupcake business starting from almost nothing, and you’ll learn how she did it in this interview. Starting a cupcake business? There’s no better place to get savings on tools like Canva, Wix, Vistaprint & many more: Mignon started The Cupcake Collection in the midst of the 2008 recession. She was experiencing a downturn of her own, and used just about the last $5 to her name to buy ingredients for cupcakes. Mignon wasn’t a baker, but she had her grandma’s cupcake recipe and a will to succeed. By the end of that first week she’d turned $5 into $600 and the growth snowballed from there. One way Mignon made a name for The Cupcake Collection was by starting the Cupcake Bus, the first mobile cupcake seller in the Nashville area. In this interview, she talks about how she got that idea and why it was so instrumental in growing her baking business. She’ll also share how she found the first customers for her cupcakes and built her team—all without going into debt or taking out any loans. After the success of her first shop, Mignon opened a new location in New Orleans. This new location was an opportunity for growth but it also brought new challenges. She explains how she overcame those challenges and the lessons she learned along the way. One thing Mignon has done from the start is listen to her customers and team, and she shares how that feedback has helped her grow her business to such impressive heights. If you want to learn more about getting started in the food industry, check out some of our past interviews: Bakery Business Rakes Huge Profits (INSANE How Much It Makes) ► How to Make $ in Restaurant Business ► Resources - Learn more about the Cupcake Collection on their website - Mignon’s memoir, Made from Scratch: Finding Success without a Recipe - Get step-by-step guidance to start a business with UpFlip’s courses - Subscribe to the UpFlip newsletter to get insights delivered straight to your inbox #cupcake #cupcakes #baking