Magnolia Bakery’s CEO reveals the secret behind the chain’s viral $9 banana pudding
Fans of the classic HBO series Sex and the City may remember a particular episode from season three when main characters Carrie Bradshaw and Miranda Hobbes sit on a bench in front of New York City’s Magnolia Bakery, biting into pink frosted cupcakes and chatting about their love lives.
The brief, 30-second cameo was enough to put the small West Village cupcake bakery on the “international map,” Magnolia Bakery CEO Bobbie Lloyd told Fortune.
The iconic bakery first opened its doors in 1996 on Bleecker and West 11th Street, but after a disagreement about expansion, business partners and original owners Jennifer Appel and Allysa Torey parted ways in 1999.
Fast-forward about seven years later, restaurateur and businessman Steve Abrams purchased the business for about $1 million. But he didn’t choose to run it alone.
Abrams asked Bobbie Lloyd, his business partner and previous co-owner of It’s A Wrap, a gourmet wrap sandwich shop that opened in the Upper West Side in 1997, if she wanted in on a business plan to expand the tiny little shop. She eagerly agreed.
“He reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this concept I’m thinking of buying, are you interested? And I came on board right away,” Lloyd told Fortune.
First recruited as the company’s operating partner and president, Lloyd’s nearly 18-year tenure has spanned several roles, including president, chief operating officer, chief baking officer (a title she coined herself), and now, chief executive officer. When she joined the team, Lloyd set out to build the brand from one location to 10 to 20 around the New York region. Now, Magnolia boasts 10 stores in U.S. cities including New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and almost 30 stores internationally in Asia, India, Turkey, and more.
“The only way you can grow a company, and I know everyone says it, but it is so true: You can’t do it yourself,” Lloyd said.” My job was about finding, recruiting, building, developing, [and] bringing in really great people so that we could grow.”
But what is it about the tiny Bleecker Street bakery that’s convinced tourists and fans to wait in hours-long lines outside of its doors every day? And why does Magnolia consider itself one of “America’s most-cherished bakeshops?”
The proof is in the pudding: the banana pudding.
The $9 banana pudding is one of the best-selling desserts on its menu, according to Lloyd and the company’s website. Magnolia’s pudding starts at $4.75 for a small, 4-ounce cup and charges $8.75 for a large 16-ounce size. Lloyd insists Magnolia did not invent the dessert, but they did put it on the map.
“When my old partner and I bought the bakery in 2006, we were like, ‘this product is really good. We need to make more of it,’” Lloyd said. “It just kind of built upon itself that the more we made, the more sold.”
Lloyd’s recipe for success
The classic banana-pudding recipe is actually very simple: just vanilla pudding, Nilla wafers, and fresh bananas. The formula remained untouched for nearly two decades. It wasn’t until the brand’s 20th anniversary when bakers finally introduced two additional banana-pudding flavors: chocolate, and peanut butter.
“That kind of launched the next thing that just took off like a rocket ship, I think we now have probably 35 to 40 different flavors of banana pudding that we try to rotate in periodically,” Lloyd said, adding that Magnolia also rotates monthly flavors into its lineup.
The main ingredient for whipping up the perfect banana pudding? Texture.
From brownie bits to cookie chunks, Lloyd likes to sprinkle crunchy condiments into the monthly flavors’ mix to ensure a dynamic tasting experience.
But after the month’s end, not every flavor is guaranteed a triumphant return. According to Lloyd, Magnolia introduces and eliminates flavors from rotation based on the most-desired fan favorites, and she credits herself and her marketing team for the flavors’ viral success.
“One thing I’m super careful of when creating new products is to not follow trends, or to be trendy, because trends come and go,” she said.
A lot of people want to know Magnolia’s secret, and according to Lloyd, it’s in the name.
“One of the reasons I think that Magnolia Bakery has been around for so many years, is that we remain classic.”
In addition to quality ingredients and fresh-flowing ideas, Lloyd says social media has been an enormous boon for turning Magnolia from a corner bakery into a global mainstay.
“When we bought the bakery from the original owner, there was no website, no social media,” Lloyd recalls. “Having these platforms to talk about our product, to show people how incredible it is, how gorgeous it looks, it just makes you want to dive in and eat a tub full of the stuff.”
