WASHINGTON, D.C. (WUSA) — The Sprinkles cupcake shop in Georgetown has closed, leaving about 30 employees suddenly out of work and searching for answers.
The bakery shut its doors on Wednesday, and by Friday night, the remaining ingredients and equipment had been sold off, donated, or packed away.
For former bakery manager Leslie Wynter, the empty store was jarring.
“It’s surreal. I’ve never heard an echo like this before in this space,” Wynter said. “It’s usually full of people. It feels really empty and hollow.”
Wynter, who worked at Sprinkles for three and a half years, said employees were blindsided by how quickly the closure unfolded. General managers across the country received a call on Monday from corporate, and employees were told on Tuesday that the store would close the following day.
“I would think that we would have at least two weeks to get everything in a row. Yeah, I’m completely blindsided by this,” said Wynter.
Sprinkles corporate has not publicly explained the closure. Wynter said she was told the company had been looking to sell the business, but that effort fell through.
“From what I understand, it was just a matter of looking to sell Sprinkles, and that falling through and then deciding to just cut their losses instead of holding out for a better offer,” she said.
Sprinkles had not responded to multiple requests for comment from WUSA9 as of Friday night, nor had KarpReilly, the company that Candace Nelson sold Sprinkles to in 2012.
The sudden shutdown has raised questions about whether the lack of notice was legal. Attorney Nora Ezzat Cozzillio of Tully Rinckey PLLC said D.C. is an at-will employment jurisdiction.
“Employers can terminate employees for any reason at any time with or without notice,” she said, noting that exceptions apply in cases involving discrimination, retaliation, or harassment.
Cozzillio also pointed to the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN Act, which requires 60 days’ notice in certain large layoffs. However, she said the Georgetown Sprinkles location doesn’t necessarily meet the threshold.
“If there was a layoff of 50 or more employees at a specific location,” notice would be required, she said. “With here, it seems like the location that existed for Sprinkles in Georgetown, they had about 30 employees, so they didn’t meet that threshold.”
Adding to employees’ frustration, Wynter said they’ve been told there will be no severance and no payout for unused sick time.
“There is no severance. Sick time won’t be paid out,” she said.
Cozzillio said companies are not legally required to offer severance. “There’s no legal requirement to do that,” she said, adding that current laws give private organizations “a lot of leniency in the personnel decisions that they make.”
She described the situation as unsettling for people who have dedicated their lives to working for private companies. “It’s very scary,” Cozzillio said.
Former employees spent Thursday and Friday selling what they could from the store and donating the rest to local nonprofits. Wynter said community support helped create a small safety net for workers.
“We got a lot of donations for our survival funds, and that’ll be our severance paid for by the Washingtonians,” she said. “I am so overwhelmed by the amount of support. I couldn’t have asked for a better way.”
The shop’s doors were locked for the final time Friday night, marking the end of Sprinkles in Georgetown.
