Lachlan Conyers is a recent transplant here from Australia. So, when a college rugby buddy offered to take him to a new culinary hot spot, he didn’t hesitate.
That is, until Ridge Meracle walked them both through Lenox Square mall — and then back outside again.
“I said, ‘I thought we were going to get cupcakes,’” Conyers chuckled. “He just said, ‘Follow me.’”
Yes, indeed. Follow him, follow her, follow anyone who's anyone to the place to be in metro Atlanta these days.
"We were driving by and we saw it and we were like, 'W-h-a-t?!'" said Kimberly Wells, 22, of Social Circle. "We said, 'We have to do it!'"
“And Instagram it,” said her sister Cheyenne, 14.
“It” is Sprinkles Atlanta’s Cupcake ATM, a name that says it all regarding its reason for being — as an extension of the new Sprinkles shop located inside the mall, its 600-cupcake capacity promises users can “withdraw” a cupcake any time of day or night, even when the store itself is closed.
Yet the name barely scratches the surface of the hot pink machine’s appeal since it arrived in Buckhead in mid-January. Mounted on the outside wall of the mall opposite the valet parking lot, the ATM’s obviously the place to go when you’re jonesin’ for a fix of, say, red velvet at 2 a.m. on a random Wednesday.
But it’s even more the place to go snap the ultimate selfie or have one of those you-gotta-see-it-to-believe-it experiences for yourself — and then with everyone else on your social media “share” list.
“I just sent it to Shannon in Connecticut,” Bethany Wheeler informed her friend, Megan Beavers, about a photo they’d taken of themselves at the ATM on a recent Sunday afternoon.
“I’m taking a picture of it for my sister,” Shaun Nelson of Dunwoody explained. “I’m trying to entice her to come visit me this summer.”
Hmmm…. Does the Metro Atlanta Chamber know about this?
Adding to Atlanta’s illustrious list of see-and-be-seen spots — The Varsity, the giant “CNN” letters outside the network’s headquarters, that house Margaret Mitchell despised where she wrote “Gone With the Wind” — wasn’t the original impetus for the Cupcake ATM’s invention in 2012. Former investment banker Candace Nelson opened the first Sprinkles in California in 2005. Now, thanks in part to celebrity shoutouts from Oprah, Streisand and Seacrest, there are 14 locations nationwide. Four locations currently have the ATM, which Nelson dreamed up when she was just another pregnant lady craving a cupcake in the middle of the night. And, of those, only Beverly Hills, Dallas and Atlanta have the new and improved Cupcake ATM Version 2.0.
"It can dispense up to four cupcakes at a time," said Laura Potter, general manager of Sprinkles Atlanta, which also sells cookies and ice cream in the store. Potter came here from the Chicago location, which — tough blow, Windy City! — still has ATM Version 1.0. "The older version can only do one cupcake per transaction."
In other words, when you do the drive of shame to Lenox after Last Call late on a Saturday night, at least you won’t have to swipe your credit card twice to buy a cupcake for you and one for Rover waiting patiently back home. Yep, they have a special concoction just for the pet, although the recipe — it’s made with honey, instead of sugar or chocolate, and has melted yogurt chips on top — is suitable for human consumption too.
“Where else can you buy your dog a cupcake?” asked Carolyn McDonald after shopping at Sprinkles inside the mall, then coming outside to gawk at the ATM.
Sprinkles Atlanta sells more than 20 different cupcake flavors on a rotating basis, with certain ones — including the “doggie cupcake” and red velvet — available every day. The same flavor schedule holds true in the ATM, which is stocked at least three times a day to ensure freshness, Potter said.
At $4.25 apiece, the cupcakes cost 50 cents more in the ATM (It takes most major credit and debit cards). The extra two bits is all about the little cardboard box that keeps the cupcakes safely swaddled mummy-like until they land in customers’ hands with nary a dollop of frosting out of place.
A camera inside the ATM even lets customers watch their cupcakes make the journey to their final destination, a pink pod where a door lifts for the big, sugar-rush of a reveal. How cool is it? Cool enough that some customers use their smart phones to shoot video or still photos of that, too.
Yet, the ultimate ATM-associated cool may lie in not being seen.
“It’s great, you can drive up, buy cupcakes and drive away,” Mallory Johnson, 24, of Marietta cackled on an after-church visit to the ATM with her sister. “And then people don’t see you walking inside the mall with all those cupcakes.”
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