Magnolia Bakery opens store in Dubai

Dubai - Cupcakes have been a trendy food in the Middle East. The market has responded so positively that the New York-based vintage dessert house Magnolia Bakery is going to open its first store outside of NYC in Dubai this month.

The store, which will be managed by the Dubai-based luxury business operator Al Tayer Group, is reportedly to locate in the downtown Dubai Mall with an area around 885 square feet, offering the same treats just like the original store, including banana pudding and red velvet cakes. Magnolia is not the only cupcake provider in the region. A strong rival it will meet is Sugar Daddy's, an American-style dessert chain run by a local young businessman named Fadi Jaber who brought the cupcake mania to the Middle East. Jaber told New York Times that a large amount of his customers, who are women, are familiar with cupcakes through living or study abroad; others got to know it through the famous HBO show Sex and the City, in which the vintage Magnolia dessert shop in Greenwich Village was as an iconic landmark in New York. Sugar Daddy's now has chain shops in Dubai, Amman and Beirut. Enjoying a large fan base, cupcakes, which are priced at about $2 USD each, are luxury treats for people in Lebanon and Jordan, where per capita gross domestic product is no higher than $11,100 USD.