*By Chloe Aiello* Valentine's Day is typically the single biggest holiday of the year for Baked by Melissa, a popular mini cupcake company ー and this year it's shaping up to be its biggest holiday for e-commerce, too. "We had our biggest day of e-commerce in company history on Monday. Tuesday was the second biggest day," said Melissa Ben-Ishay, co-founder of Baked by Melissa. Ben-Ishay co-founded her namesake cupcakery with the help of her brother in 2008. Since then, she has sold more than 100 million of her signature mini-cupcakes and expanded to several locations in New York and New Jersey. The company's "better together" V-Day promotion ー which features flavor combinations, like strawberry and dark chocolate, that complement each other ー mirrors Ben-Ishay's belief that teamwork helped her business succeed. "You can't do anything alone. It's called Baked by Melissa, but I have an incredible team of like-minded, hardworking, passionate people who I founded the company with and continue to grow the company with," she said. "Also just recognizing your strengths, but more importantly, your weaknesses." Although Baked By Melissa now employs about 250 people, Ben-Ishay still has her hands in the batter when it comes to overseeing the brand and developing new products and recipes. She said that although the company does have new products launching in the spring, the cupcakery won't be jumping on the latest trend: CBD. "Personally, I love CBD and take it every night before I go to sleep ー a tincture under my tongue," she said. "CBD is not currently in the works, but it's not the first time I've heard or thought about it." The company also won't be branching out into making full-sized cupcakes anytime soon. "We make them small so you can try them all," Ben-Ishay said. For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/melissa-ben-ishay).

Share:
More In Business
Goodyear Blimp at 100: ‘Floating Piece of Americana’ Still Thriving
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
Is U.S. Restaurants’ Breakfast Boom Contributing to High Egg Prices?
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
Trump Administration Shutters Consumer Protection Agency
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
Load More