Former NFL teammates Michael Griffin and Brian Orakpo, along with common friend Bryan Hynson, opted to pursue a more hands-on approach to entrepreneurship, and they are now known as The Cupcake Guys.
Griffin agreed to open a Gigi’s Cupcakes franchise in Austin alongside Orakpo and Hynson after playing his final down in 2016 and obtaining his degree from the University of Texas.
“The only people that really have your best interests at heart is yourself. So, we agreed to start this business, we all agreed that it wasn’t going to be any significant others, it wasn’t going to be family, it was going to have to be us three that run and operate our store,” Griffin said to SI.
From selecting a venue and securing permissions to establishing an operating agreement, the two now-retired football players were involved in every step of the process.
“It was a different side of a world that me and Brian Orakpo didn’t know anything about. We can talk football all day. But we had to learn about business,” Griffin said to ESPN. “Learning how to start up a LLC to getting someone who is going to be working with your account, to financing, just a lot of things we take for granted being professional athletes.”
After a year of planning and building a store from the ground up, the three friends opened Gigi’s Cupcakes in Bee Cave, Texas, in 2018. Griffin and Hynson even refurbished the entire interior of their store on their own, which they now regret as a time-consuming blunder.
They had their own two-day training that required them to work from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day for three weeks while learning how to open the shop, design, bake every cupcake they sold, be the cashier, and shut the business.
“The positive part that surprised me is how much they’re willing to actually get down and dirty. Grif will get in there and knock out 1,000 cupcakes on the day or Rak will be in there decorating the cupcakes and handling any kind of maintenance items,” Hyson remarked.
After producing a viral commercial for the Microsoft Surface Pro in 2019, the three received national prominence. They’ve since been branded the “Cupcake Guys,” a moniker they’ve trademarked and used.
With 2020 being such a crazy ride, the Cupcake Guys quickly adapted to the pandemic, moving to only takeaway and delivery orders. They also cooperated with a local agency that assists foster families and released online tutorial videos on how to create cupcakes.
In 2021, the Texas natives will host and evaluate bakers fighting for a $10,000 investment on Michael Strahan’s executive-produced Food Network show Cupcake Guys Training Camp.
Last year, The Story Lab and SMAC Productions, a division of SMAC Entertainment, created The Cupcake Guys, a reality show about how the three men picked up a piping bag and cupcake tin when it was time to put the football down.