CHAPEL HILL - Outside Sugarland, the quaint East Franklin Street bakery next door to the Carolina Coffee Shop, stand two chalkboards: one advertising its appearance on the Food Network, the other titled "Du Jour," showing a list of flavors from raspberry vanilla to tropical mango tango.

A cupcake is drawn on the side.

Cupcakes were not always part of the plan for owner Katrina Ryan, a former pastry chef at La Residence restaurant who opened Sugarland in February 2008.

"They were just kind of a thing," Ryan said. "They weren't the thing. Cupcakes really came onto the menu because you could put them out faster than you could a lot of other things."

In less than three years, cupcakes - and Ryan's business - have changed drastically. Sugarland rose from a start-up to a bakery featured on national media, including Southern Living magazine, the Food Network and "Good Morning America."

Cupcakes now account for half of the bakery's business.

"[The cupcakes] end up advertising themselves in our window where we keep our extra ones on display," explained Hillary Winter, a 2010 UNC graduate who markets the bakery.

The local appetite for cupcakes reflects a national trend.

Consumption of cupcakes in the U.S. is rising, the United Kingdom's The Independent newspaper recently reported, with sales expected to rise 20 percent in the next five years. Cupcake reality series such as TLC's "DC Cupcakes" and Food Network's "Cupcake Wars" highlight the trend, connecting viewers to bakeries' behind-the-scene operations.

"People just ask us when we're going to be on it," Ryan said of "Cupcake Wars" in particular. "They're like, 'Why aren't you guys on Cupcake Wars?' And I'm like, 'Well, because we can only do so much, you know?'"

Still, Ryan aims to please. This fall promises to be bright for the bakery with an appearance lined up for the "Today Show" in association with its Modern Day Wedding Contest and "Fabulous Cakes," TLC's new series.

Two options

When Ryan came to Chapel Hill, she never intended to be a chef. After getting a culinary degree in France, she worked in software sales. When her company downsized, she had two options: leave town or find a new job.

The decision was already made for her: "My husband is determined to die in the house in which we now live," Ryan said. She took a couple of years off before becoming a pastry chef.

Sugarland came to be because of a dream, Ryan says, but not her own.

"My husband was actually going around town apparently telling people that I had always dreamed of starting my own bakery, which is nonsense [because of bakers' early morning hours]."

Still, the word reached the couple's banker, who called Ryan about opening a bakery in Chapel Hill. When her banker was able to get her "the old [Alexander] Julian spot" in a UNC-owned building, "the momentum took over."

Cupcakes for the times

With $1 million of dessert being sold yearly and business growing 25 to 30 percent this year, Ryan and her chefs now make about 200 cupcakes daily -- "60,000 cupcakes a year," she said.

Priced at $3.25 each, cupcakes at Sugarland are decorated with icing, candy or fruit, and in many cases, fillings.

The flavors vary according to bakers' whims, ingredients in season and what's left in the kitchen from wedding cakes.

"So if we had some peanut butter mousse left, you'd get peanut butter mousse cupcakes," Ryan said.

What stays on the menu is in the hands of the consumers.

"If [a cupcake] sells well, we continue to make it," said Winter. "We let our customers communicate to us."

And customers communicate their favorite flavor clearly. Their tastes are simple, says Ryan; they love chocolate and red velvet.

"As many strawberry daiquiris ... as we come up with, chocolate with vanilla butter cream is still our most popular cupcake."

It's Chef Joey Boccio's job to make sure the store shelves reflect these preferences.

"That's my main goal: to stock the entire case," she said. "What cupcake flavors sell, which ones don't, just stock everything."

When it comes to cupcake flavors, Ryan, Boccio and Winter have clear favorites: spumoni, pumpkin chocolate chip and raspberry almond.

But with fall flavors such as lemon-filled spice cake returning to the menu, the choice can grow more complicated daily.

Winter offered advice, "What I tell folks is that coming to Sugarland is not about figuring out what is good. It is figuring out what mood you're in."