Baked by Melissa brings cupcake kits to Target

Baked by Melissa is entering Target stores with at-home cupcake baking kits for the holiday season, the New York chain’s first move into retail, CNBC reported.

The line includes cupcake mixes, liners and a pan in the brand’s signature bite-size portions, with three flavors: Christmas Tie-Dye, Marshmallow Hot Cocoa and Red Velvet. The products hit Target shelves on Sunday.

Founded by Melissa Ben-Ishay in 2008, Baked by Melissa has nine permanent locations in the New York area and ships its minicupcakes nationwide. The chain has 2.8 million followers on TikTok, and Ben-Ishay’s social media stardom has led to collaborations with Ferrero and Wonder.

The retail plunge

Ben-Ishay had discussed at-home baking products for years but only decided to move forward a year ago, during a trip to Target with her two children. A walk through the baking aisle made her decide the brand “should be there,” she said.

Retail moves more slowly than Baked by Melissa’s usual pace. The company needed just a few days to create New York Knicks-branded minicupcakes after the team won the NBA championship in June. Figuring out retail products meant “a lot of waiting and approvals and new partners,” Ben-Ishay said.

Twelve months later, the cupcake mixes arrived on shelves, just in time for the holiday season. The timing is deliberate. For Target, the next two months will be critical as the retailer tries to win back its core customer after a disappointing holiday season last year.

The three flavors are designed for the season. Christmas Tie-Dye is a visual product, meant for social media sharing as much as for eating. Marshmallow Hot Cocoa and Red Velvet are familiar holiday flavors that give shoppers a low-risk reason to try the brand. The kits include everything needed to bake bite-size cupcakes at home, which is the format Baked by Melissa built its reputation on.

The Target fit

Ben-Ishay, 42, is a mother of two and fits Target’s prototypical shopper. “We started with Target because I’m a 42-year-old mom of two, and I find myself there a lot,” she said.

The alignment between the brand’s founder and Target’s core customer is the kind of match that retail buyers look for. Baked by Melissa’s TikTok audience skews young and female, and its products are visually driven, which suits Target’s merchandising approach. The exclusive arrangement gives Target a product its competitors do not have, and gives Baked by Melissa access to aisles it has never been in.

The CPG trend

Baked by Melissa is the latest restaurant brand to enter consumer packaged goods. California Pizza Kitchen and TGI Fridays have licensed their brands for frozen foods for decades. More recently, Chick-fil-A and Dutch Bros have leaned into grocery products.

For smaller companies like Momofuku and Carbone, space on a grocery shelf extends brand reach and gives consumers a chance to try their food without a reservation and at a lower cost. The calculus is different for a cupcake chain. Baked by Melissa’s product is a kit, not a finished food, so the consumer is buying the brand and the experience of baking, not just the flavor.

What I think

The Target exclusive is a smart first move for Baked by Melissa. Target’s holiday season is the highest-traffic moment in retail, and an exclusive product from a brand with 2.8 million TikTok followers gives shoppers a reason to choose Target over Walmart or Amazon. The fit between Ben-Ishay and Target’s core customer is genuine, not manufactured, and that authenticity is what makes the product feel like a discovery rather than a brand extension.

The slower pace of retail is a challenge for a company accustomed to moving fast. The Knicks cupcakes took days. The Target kits took a year. If the holiday launch goes well, Baked by Melissa will need to figure out how to speed up its retail pipeline without sacrificing the quality that makes the brand worth buying. A single holiday product is a test. A recurring retail presence is a business.

The flavors tell their own story. Christmas Tie-Dye is built for Instagram and TikTok, the channels where Baked by Melissa built its audience. The visual appeal of a tie-dye cupcake baked at home is the kind of content that generates organic posts from customers, which is free marketing for both the brand and Target. Marshmallow Hot Cocoa and Red Velvet are safer choices that give hesitant shoppers a familiar entry point. The assortment covers both the customer who wants to share and the customer who wants to bake with their kids.

The CPG trend among restaurants is driven by the same pressure affecting every chain: consumers are dining out less, and the ones who are dining out are pickier. Grocery shelves give restaurant brands a way to reach customers at home, where more eating is happening. Baked by Melissa’s kit format is clever because it sells the brand without competing with its stores. A customer who buys the kit is not substituting it for a trip to a Baked by Melissa location. They are buying a different product for a different occasion.

The food industry is going to see more of this. Regional chains with strong social media followings and distinctive products are well positioned for retail, because they bring built-in demand and a story that national CPG brands cannot replicate. Baked by Melissa has both. The question is whether the kits sell well enough to justify a broader retail rollout beyond Target, and whether the company can manage the operational complexity of retail distribution while running nine stores and a shipping business.