Jilly's Cupcake Bar opens doors in Edwardsville

EDWARDSVILLE - Jilly's Cupcake Bar just celebrated their 10th year in business with cup cakes of course but also a brand new location on Park Street in Edwardsville.

"We've been doing this 10 years," Brittney Koch-Dowell, General Manager of Jilly's said. "We finally decided that we didn't want to franchise. We said lets just keep our brand and lets open up small satellite stores. We've been talking about it for a while."

Dowell said that for several years the building owner had been suggesting that Jilly's make the move Edwardsville but they just didn't feel like it was the place at the time, but that changed.

"We started to watch and it started grow and grow and grow," Dowell said. "Then, we did studies on our demographic that would drive all the way to Missouri to have our cupcakes. Twenty-five percent of the people came from Edwardsville. That's high when you think about traveling."

The new Edwardsville location is a little smaller than the one in Missouri but that hasn't prevented Jilly's from continuing to make quality products and bringing in customers.

"Everything is still made the same," Dowell said. "Made everyday and brought over here. Four times a day we're making shipment and deliveries so everything is staying fresh all the time."

The menu at Jilly's doesn't stop at cupcake either. Sandwiches and ice cream are just a few other items on Jilly's made from scratch menu.

"We make everything," Dowell said. "We make all of our cupcakes from scratch. We make all of our butter creams. We use no lard. We use no artificial flavoring. A lot of our ice cream is inspired by our cupcakes. So our cupcake batter actually goes inside the ice cream. Same with food. Everything is made from scratch. We don't order anything in precooked. We make all the dressings. All the spreads. Cook the brisket. Make all the humus and sauces. Everything that we do is manufactured at Delmar and brought here fresh."

Jilly's has built up an impressive reputation over the years not only in the area but nationally having won the Food Network's Cupcake Wars on more than one occasion. But that isn't the only thing that makes Jilly's unique.

"We won Cupcake Wars twice," Dowell said. "That was huge for us. Before that we had 12 seats at Jilly's and now it's at 100 seats. That probably made us who we are. But Jill's vision to do something that nobody else does, which is a half-pound cupcake stuffed and mounted to with love, nobody else does that. Nobody else really makes their own ice cream and is able to use their batters. Even in our waffle cones, it's our cupcake batter."

With 100's of flavors to choose from at their Delmar location, the new Edwardsville location at 222 E. Park Street will carry 14 flavors of cupcakes and rotate four flavors every month and 12 ice creams that will also be on rotation.

Dowell said Jilly's is all about their customers and want input. They want to be involved with the community and want feed back and suggestions flavors.

"We want people's suggestions on food. We want suggestions on cupcake flavors and ice cream flavors," Dowell said. "So we've left out there and open on social media. We're trying to be involved in the community too. We want what they want."

More information and Jilly's full menu can be found at jillyscupcakebar.com and by visiting their Facebook.

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