Who is Tracey Noonan?
Tracey Noonan had a long run of small businesses before cupcakes, including commercial advertising photography, photo styling, real estate investing and animal wrangling for TV, print and film. After a cake-decorating class, she and her daughter, Danielle DesRoches (now Danielle Vilagie), started posting their baking online. To ship cupcakes to people who asked for them, they began baking them into mason jars, which stayed fresh for up to 10 days without refrigeration. They opened a shop in Cohasset, Massachusetts, in 2011.
In 2011 the company got unexpected publicity when airport security confiscated one of its jarred cupcakes over the liquids limit. On Shark Tank Season 4 (2013), Kevin O'Leary invested $75,000 in exchange for $1 per cupcake sold until he recouped his money, then 45 cents per cupcake. Hickory Farms partnered with the brand in 2018 and acquired it in June 2021. Noonan now teaches an online entrepreneurship course called The Cupcake Analogy, works as a speaker and consultant, and co-founded Wicked Good Entertainment, a film and TV development company.
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