moss Brings Flirty Cupcakes In From the Streets

After spending the past few years on the streets, Flirty Cupcakes has a new dessert garage to call home. Flirty was preparing their delectable delights in a shared kitchen in Chicago’s West Loop, and selling to the public out of two food trucks.

Now in addition to their rounds in Chicagoland, Flirty will sell their in-house baked treats from their new shop on Taylor Street. After identifying the 1,200 square foot space on Taylor near UIC, moss helped transform the formerly hapless space into a modern dessert garage.

Flirty Cupcakes’ New Dessert Design

The design combines the clean modernism you’d expect from a bakery with a Chicago industrial twist. moss opened up the public space by clearing some walls and obtrusive equipment, exposing the existing, worn masonry (which ended up revealing a really cool stained glass window).

The chunky wood window frames and Cor-ten steel cover some of the larger gaps in the masonry and framing while adding some warmth to the garage. Fabricated locally in Pilsen, the custom designed steel and glass dessert display doubles as the check out counter.

The racing stripe on the west wall mimics the classic stripe found on vintage Minis (and the Flirty-mobile) that leads to the rear wall composed of reclaimed oven doors. We also reclaimed some vintage tin for wall covering in the restrooms.

First, the “before” pictures: