Vancouver bakery bandit calls to apologize, offers to pay for door, cupcakes

It turns out Vancouver’s bakery bandit is actually pretty sweet.

Days after Sweet Something was broken into by someone who proceeded to steal six cupcakes, the business owner says the man responsible has called to personally say sorry.

“The big news is that our burglar gave us a call to the bakery,” owner Emma Irvine said in an update on TikTok.

She tells CityNews the call came in on Monday.

“He called the bakery at first and spoke to some of my staff and my amazing team was able to arrange a time for us to have a chat. He called me and immediately started profusely apologizing,” Irvine said. 

“I couldn’t believe that he had called the bakery. I don’t know why, I just never thought somebody would call in after that. To have a conversation with him, it kind of closes the book on it for me. Sometimes getting broken into can be scary and this was, in a weird twist of emotions, kind of seems like a feel-good moment when I got to talk to him.”

She says the man has offered to cover the cost of the door that was broken in this bizarre incident. He’s also offered to pay for the cupcakes he took.

“I actually asked him what he thought about the cupcakes and he said that he really, really enjoyed them, although, who knows if he felt like he had to tell me that,” Irvine said with a laugh.

“I told him I wasn’t upset with him, I told him I wasn’t even mad.”

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Read/watch more: Vancouver bakery bandit nabs 6 cupcakes, mops floor and leaves

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The break-in happened last week and was captured by surveillance cameras. The footage shows the man kick the glass on the door in before carefully entering the business.

Throughout the video, the man is seen walking around the business, sitting down, and even cleaning up the mess created by the glass with a mop and bucket.

Before leaving with a box of six Chocolate Champagne cupcakes under his arm, Irvine says the bakery bandit left some selfies on the business phone. In them, he’s wearing orange sunglasses.

In the wake of the break-in, Sweet Something was offering special cupcakes, named Crime of Passion, to help pay for the broken door. The cupcakes featured the now-iconic orange sunglasses, which Irvine says he’s promised to give her.

“Which I am dying for. I feel like I would wear them all the time just to make light of the situation,” she said.

Overall, Irvine says things could have been much worse. She says since the break-in was first reported, business definitely picked up.

“There’s eyes on the business that would have never been there before. We even have people from the U.S. — in Texas, in Seattle — offering to buy cupcakes, saying they don’t even want them shipped, they just want to help support us because they saw our story. It’s really incredible what the online community can do for a small business,” she said.

As for what compelled the man to break in — Irvine says that’s still unclear.

“I think it was just one of those things. Our bakery was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she joked.

She admits the apology has “really righted the wrong.”

The store has been operating in the Dunbar neighbourhood for the past five years.

-With files from Greg Bowman, Emily Marsten, and Cole Schisler