Business

In Britain, a Fight Over a Film Studio Becomes a Test for the Economy

Published

11 months ago

February 24, 2025

In Britain, a Fight Over a Film Studio Becomes a Test for the Economy

Andrew Rackstraw has lived in Marlow, a small, wealthy town on the River Thames about 30 miles west of London, for nearly three decades. Its main streets are dotted with luxury boutiques, high-end cafes and stores like Saddle Safari, Mr. Rackstraw’s bike shop.

With a population of about 14,000, Marlow also has a plush cinema and a rowing club that dates to the 19th century. Around the corner from Mr. Rackstraw’s shop is a Michelin-starred restaurant. Farther down the road is Britain’s only two-Michelin-starred pub.

It is the picture of an idyllic English town.

But there is a threat, as locals see it, to Marlow’s quiet charm: a proposal to build a 750-million-pound ($950 million) film and TV studio complex. Plans include 18 soundstages, workshop space, offices and outdoor filming lots across 90 acres between Marlow and the smaller village of Little Marlow.

For more than three years, many Marlow residents have opposed the project, dubious of the developers’ promises that it will bring thousands of jobs, including creative roles, and more business for the town’s economy. “It will have the biggest impact to Marlow that we’ve ever seen because of the scale of it,” Mr. Rackstraw said on a recent morning inside his store.

In the past few months, the battle over this studio has taken on national significance as a marker of how far the British government will go to use development as a means to revive the nation’s stagnant economy. But the proposed film studio is not crucial infrastructure or needed housing, unlike much of the other development the government has vowed to speed up.

Marlow is “already choked with traffic,” Mr. Rackstraw said. The studio would bring thousands more cars, he added, and the town would “lose the very element that draws people to Marlow — the fact that it isn’t spoiled like so many other towns.”

Opponents seemed to be victorious last May when the local council rejected the planning application. But just a few months later, a new government, led by the Labour Party, breathed new life into the studio plans.

Britain’s creative industries, including film and TV production, have been designated a central part of the government’s economic growth agenda. These industries have long been a major cultural and economic force for the country, stretching back to the early 1900s. Alfred Hitchcock helped shape the thriller genre in the 1930s in Britain. But the country also became a top destination for international productions, particularly since the 1970s when “Star Wars” filmed just outside London. More recently, blockbusters like “Wicked” and “Barbie” were filmed here. It’s the largest production hub for Netflix outside North America.

The Labour government has said economic growth is its No. 1 mission, but since the party came to power last summer, growth has been mostly elusive. Hampered by strained public finances, the government is depending on changes to the nation’s planning system as a crucial lever in generating growth. Ministers have proclaimed that they will “back the builders, not the blockers” to revitalize Britain’s economy.

The developers behind the project, led by Robert Laycock, the chief executive of the would-be Marlow Film Studios, appealed the council’s decision in September. A month later, Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister and secretary of state for housing, communities and local government, stepped in and said she would decide whether to grant approval, a relatively rare intervention.

“There’s a growing consensus across the U.K. that the planning system is too restrictive and that this is causing problems,” said Anthony Breach, a researcher for Centre for Cities. “It’s too difficult to build, it’s too uncertain, it’s too judicial.”

But the Labour Party has started to loosen the rules, and there has been a “change in mood music,” he added.

Last month, the government said it supported adding a third runway to Heathrow Airport, potentially drawing an end to a two-decade debate on the subject. Ministers have also made it easier to build more houses around commuter rail stations and to speed up decisions on big infrastructure projects such as nuclear plants and wind farms. “The answer can’t always be no,” Rachel Reeves, the chancellor of the Exchequer, said recently.

The future of the Marlow film studio is in limbo. A planning inspector overseeing a five-week public inquiry, which ends Monday, will make a recommendation to Ms. Rayner. Another studio project, just seven miles from Marlow, is also hoping for Ms. Rayner’s approval to overturn a rejected application.

Mr. Laycock chose the land he wanted to build on about a decade ago. “It’s really tough to do anything in this country,” he said. But he said he was enthusiastic about the government’s changes to “get us out of this rut” of not wanting to do ambitious projects.

Most of the development would be on fields of thistles near several lakes where red kites fly overhead. But the complex would also nearly envelop a small area of housing, which includes more than 50 mobile homes where many retirees live and an early-18th-century house converted into apartments.

Thorsten Polleit, an economist who lives in one of the converted apartments, testified in the inquiry that residents would be “totally surrounded, literally incarcerated” by the development.

Among the reasons the Marlow studio has been contested is that it is proposed on a so-called green belt, which is land protected from development to stop urban sprawl. Green belt makes up 13 percent of England’s land.

The government is planning to reclassify some of the poor-quality parts of the green belt as “gray belt” and thus open it up to development, a change that has been mostly welcomed because it could accommodate more housing where people most want to live and work.

The plans for the Marlow studio also come after a boom in studio building in Britain. In the past five years, studio space has doubled to about six million square feet as developers and local authorities have capitalized on interest from American streaming giants including Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime and British government support for the sector.

But the production industry was hurt by the Hollywood strikes in 2023, because most of the spending comes from the United States. And the big streamers have also spent less on content in recent years. Last year, the industry started to recover, with £5.6 billion spent in Britain on film and high-end TV production, 86 percent of which came from abroad. That was 31 percent more than in 2023, but did not return to the highs of 2021 and 2022.

“2024 was a transition year from the worst parts of the strikes,” said Adrian Wootton, the chief executive of the British Film Commission. He’s feeling “cautiously optimistic” about this year as filming picks up again, including for “Star Wars” TV shows and Season 4 of “Bridgerton,” and the benefits of enhanced tax relief measures introduced last year.

The commission has supported the expansion of studio space, including projects still in development such as the one in Marlow, but is not “banging the drum saying we need even more than that,” Mr. Wootton said.

Despite the hurdles, Mr. Laycock, the Marlow Film Studios chief executive, is committed to having the studio near Marlow. It’s the “right and only” location, he said, in part, because it is less than 10 miles away from Pinewood Studios, where many of the James Bond movies were filmed. Mr. Laycock is a great-nephew of Ian Fleming, the author of the Bond books, a connection he emphasizes amid accusations that he and his team do not have enough experience in the film industry.

“Nobody is denying that the planning system needs reform,” said Anna Crabtree, a parish councilor for Little Marlow, the village bordering the studio. But, she argues, one of the problems is that the system is biased toward people with money who can push forward “unrealistic proposals that local people know are not going to work.”

The battle has been “a huge drain on the local community,” she said. “It’s really stressful for local people.”

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Business

The rise and fall of the Sprinkles empire that made cupcakes cool

Published

3 hours ago

January 11, 2026

Press Room

The rise and fall of the Sprinkles empire that made cupcakes cool

After the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s, Candace Nelson reevaluated her career. She had just been laid off from a boutique investment banking firm in San Francisco’s tech startup scene, and realized she wanted a change.

From her home, she launched a custom cake service that soon morphed into an idea for a cupcake-focused bakery. Nelson and her husband — whom she met at the Bay Area firm where she had worked — then pooled their savings, moved to Southern California and together opened Sprinkles Cupcakes from a 600-square-foot Beverly Hills storefront.

The store quickly sold out on opening day in 2005, and over the next two decades, the Sprinkles brand exploded across the country, opening dozens of locations of its specialty bakeries as well as mall kiosks and its signature around-the-clock cupcake ATMs in several states.

“It was an unproven concept and a big risk,” Nelson told the Times in 2013, at which point the business had 400 employees at 14 locations and dispensed upward of a thousand cupcakes a day from its Beverly Hills ATM alone.

But now, the iconic cupcake brand is no longer.

Sprinkles abruptly shut down all of its locations on Dec. 31, leaving hundreds of retail employees across Arizona; California; Washington, D.C.; Florida; Nevada; Texas; and Utah in a lurch with little notice, no severance and scrambling to fulfill a surge of orders from customers clamoring to get their last tastes.

Candace Nelson, the founder of Sprinkles cupcakes, in Beverly Hills in 2018.

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

Although Nelson long ago exited the company, having sold it to private equity firm KarpReilly LLC in 2012, she shared her disappointment with its fate on social media.

“As many of you know, I started Sprinkles in 2005 with a KitchenAid mixer and a big idea,” Nelson said in the post. “It’s surreal to see this chapter come to a close — and it’s not how I imagined the story would unfold.”

The company, now headquartered in Austin, Texas, made no formal announcement regarding the closures and Nelson has not said more than what she posted online. The company did share a comment with KTLA, saying “After thoughtful consideration, we’ve made the very difficult decision to transition away from operating company-owned Sprinkles bakeries.” Neither Nelson nor representatives of Sprinkles and KarpReilly responded to The Times’ requests for comment.

Sprinkles’ demise comes at a tough time for the food and beverage industry. At brick-and-mortar food retail locations, the non-negotiable ingredient and labor costs can be high. And shifting consumer sentiments away from sugar-filled sweets and toward more healthy and functional options, strained pocketbooks, as well as pushes by federal and state governments to nix artificial colors and flavoring, are creating uncertainties for businesses, those in the food industry said.

A 24-hour cupcake ATM at Sprinkles Cupcakes in Beverly Hills in 2012.

“Over the last 10 years the consumer has wizened up tremendously and is looking at the back of the label and choosing where to spend their sweets,” said David Jacobowitz, founder of Austin-based Nebula Snacks, an online food retailer.

At the same time, it’s also not uncommon for businesses owned by private-equity firms to close on a whim, where relentlessly profit-driven decisions might be made simply to pursue more lucrative projects. In recent years, private-equity deals have been seen to milk businesses for profit by slashing costs and quality, and have appeared to play a role in the breakup of some legacy retail brands, including Toys ‘R’ Us, Red Lobster, TGI Fridays and fabrics chain JoAnn Inc. On the flip side, private equity can help infuse much-needed cash into a business and extend its life.

Stevie León and her co-workers received a text the night before New Year’s Eve informing them the franchise Sprinkles location in Sarasota, Fla., where they worked would close permanently after their shifts the next day.

León, 33, said her position as a scratch baker mixing batter and frosting cupcakes overnight had been a dream job, since she had been searching for ways to develop baking skills without paying for expensive schooling.

“I really thought it was my forever job and it was taken away literally in a day,” she said. “I’m just taking it one day at a time.”

Ivy Hernandez, 27, the general manager at the Sarasota store, said that after the news was delivered to her boss, the franchise owner, they rushed to learn their options to keep the store afloat but quickly learned it could be legally precarious to continue operating. The store had been open less than a year.

A nearby corporate store, Hernandez said, had been in disarray for months, with employees contending with broken fridges and lapsed ingredient shipments, as managers implored higher-ups to pay the bills so the business could operate properly.

“It really felt like they were trying to do everything they could to screw everyone over as hard as possible until the end,” Hernandez said.

Sprinkles did not respond to questions about the franchise program or allegations of mismanagement in the lead-up to the closure.

A person walks by Sprinkles on the Upper East Side in New York City in 2020.

The obsession with tiny cakes in paper cups traces back to an episode of “Sex and the City” aired in 2000 showing Miranda and Carrie savoring cupcakes on a bench outside a West Village bakery called Magnolia’s Cupcakes.

“Big wasn’t a crush, he was a crash,” Carrie says to Miranda as she peels down the wrapper on a cupcake topped with bright pink buttercream frosting. She punctuates the quip by taking a big bite, leaving a glob of frosting on her face.

The scene sparked a tourism phenomenon for the bakery — which went on to create a “Carrie” line of cupcakes — and helped propel the burgeoning cupcake industry and companies like Sprinkles Cupcakes, Crumbs Bake Shop and Baked by Melissa to new heights.

Within a decade there was already talk of a “Cupcake Bubble,” coined by writer Daniel Gross in a 2009 Slate article where he argued that the 2008 economic recession laid the groundwork for a proliferation of cupcake stores across America, because a lot of people could figure out how to make tasty cupcakes cheaply and scale up without a huge capital investment.

Amid the decimation of many other local retail businesses, one could take over storefronts in heavily trafficked areas for cheap. As a result, “casual baking turned into an urban industry,” Gross said.

The cupcake fervor hit its peak when Crumbs, which had started as a single bakery on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in 2003, went public in a reverse merger worth $66 million in 2011. The wildly popular mini-cakes were selling at $4.50 a pop. But it became clear very quickly that it had grown too large, too fast. It closed in 2014 after it lost its stock listing on Nasdaq and defaulted on about $14.3 million in financing.

Analysts at the time said consumers were cooling on opulent desserts and suggested tougher times were ahead for bakeries that focused solely on cupcakes.

But Baked by Melissa has thus far proved those analysts wrong. The company has remained privately owned, and according to its founder, is focused on nationwide e-commerce operations — and on expanding the brand beyond sweets. Founder Melissa Ben-Ishay has gained a following on social media by sharing recipes for nutritious, easy-to-make meals.

“Businesses that prioritize quick value increases to get acquired often crash,” Ben-Ishay told Forbes last year. “We’re committed to maintaining product quality and steady, long-term growth.”

Before its unceremonious and sudden closure, Spinkles company leadership had pushed to diversify its business as part of a strategy to recover from a pandemic-era lull.

Chief Executive Dan Mesches told trade publication Nation’s Restaurant News in 2021 that comparable sales had grown since pre-pandemic years. He said the company had ramped up its direct-to-consumer and off-premises offerings and created a line of chocolates made to look like the tops of their cupcakes. The company also introduced a new franchise program with the goal of opening some 200 locations in the U.S. and abroad over three years.

“Innovation is everything for us,” Mesches said.

Sprinkles was known for, among other things, inventive and somewhat corny methods of customer delivery. Besides the trademark ATMs, the company’s vending machines found at many airports made loud, attention-drawing jingles, drawing dramatic complaints and jokes from TikTok travelers. In the 2010s, the company debuted a custom-built truck — “the Sprinklesmobile” — to deliver cupcakes to cities without physical locations.

Frances Hughes, co-founder of online wholesale marketplace Starch, said there’s no question that gourmet sweet treats are still in vogue. But brick-and-mortar locations are much more risky, with more unpredictability. Having large fixed costs makes a business “extremely sensitive to small changes in traffic or frequency,” while online or e-commerce models can be more flexible.

“I think cupcakes as a product still have demand. But the novelty paths that support that rapid retail expansion have passed,” Hughes said.

When Nelson, the Sprinkles founder, posted her somber message about the closure, she asked people to share memories of the company. Many offered heartfelt responses, her comments flooded with stories, for example, of poor college students making the trek to the Beverly Hills location for a limited number of first-come, first-served free cupcakes.

But many of the comments also criticized Nelson’s sale to private equity.

“You sold it to PE and expected it to not close?? What planet are you living on? I don’t begrudge you for selling as that’s entirely your choice but to think any PE firm cares about a company in the slightest is insanity,” one Instagram user said.

Nicole Rucker, an L.A.-based pastry chef and owner of Fat+Flour Pie Shop, said she didn’t observe a decline in the quality of the product after the private-equity takeover. She has been a longtime admirer of the company, driving up from San Diego to sample the cupcakes when its store opened. The simple attractiveness of the box and the logo, and the consistency in the way cupcakes were decorated, “was inspiring,” she said.

“It had a strong hold on people for years,” Rucker said.

Rucker said however that when a private-equity-owned business shutters, she doesn’t feel sadness: “I would rather give my money to a fellow small-business owner, because I would rather know that every dollar and every sale matters.”

Michelle Wainwright, the owner and founder of Indiana-based bakery Cute as a Cupcake! said that although the niche cupcake industry may no longer be in its heyday — with “Sex and the City” no longer airing and competitive baking show “Cupcake Wars” (which Candace Nelson served as a judge on) now canceled — they are still versatile treats, with great potential for creativity.

And they are sentimental to her, because she uses her grandmother’s recipe.

“Cupcakes are still a winner,” Wainwright said. “It’s my belief that a life with out cupcakes is a life without love.”

Business

Bay Area semiconductor testing company to lay off more than 200 workers

Published

15 hours ago

January 11, 2026

Press Room

Bay Area semiconductor testing company to lay off more than 200 workers

Semiconductor testing equipment company FormFactor is laying off more than 200 workers and closing manufacturing facilities as it seeks to cut costs after being hit by higher import taxes.

The Livermore, Calif.,-based company plans to shutter its Baldwin Park facility and cut 113 jobs there on Jan. 30, according to a layoff notice sent to the California Employment Development Department this week. Its facility in Carlsbad is scheduled to close in mid-December later this year, which will result in 107 job losses, according to an earlier notice.

Technicians, engineers, managers, assemblers and other workers are among those expected to lose their jobs, according to the notices.

The company offers semiconductor testing equipment, including probe cards, and other products. The industry has been benefiting from increased AI chip adoption and infrastructure spending.

FormFactor is among the employers that have been shedding workers amid more economic uncertainty.

Companies have cited various reasons for workforce reductions, including restructuring, closures, tariffs, market conditions and artificial intelligence, which can help automate repetitive tasks or generate text, images and code.

The tech industry — a key part of California’s economy — has been hit hard by job losses after the pandemic, which spurred more hiring, and amid the rise of AI tools that are reshaping its workforce.

As tech companies and startups compete fiercely to dominate the AI race, they’ve also cut middle management and other workers as they move faster to release more AI-powered products. They’re also investing billions of dollars into data centers that house computing equipment used to process the massive troves of information needed to train and maintain AI systems.

Companies such as chipmaker Nvidia and ChatGPT maker OpenAI have benefited from the AI boom, while legacy tech companies such as Intel are fighting to keep up.

FormFactor’s cuts are part of restructuring plans that “are intended to better align cost structure and support gross margin improvement to the Company’s target financial model,” the company said in a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission this week.

The company plans to consolidate its facilities in Baldwin Park and Carlsbad, the filing said.

FormFactor didn’t respond to a request for comment.

FormFactor has been impacted by tariffs and seen its growth slow. The company employs more than 2,000 people and has been aiming to improve its profit margins.

In October, the company reported $202.7 million in third-quarter revenue, down 2.5% from the third quarter of fiscal 2024. The company’s net income was $15.7 million in the third quarter of 2025, down from $18.7 million in the same quarter of the previous year.

FormFactor’s stock has been up 16% since January, surpassing more than $67 per share on Friday.

Business

In-N-Out Burger outlets in Southern California hit by counterfeit bill scam

Published

1 day ago

January 10, 2026

Press Room

In-N-Out Burger outlets in Southern California hit by counterfeit bill scam

Two people allegedly used $100 counterfeit bills at dozens of In-N-Out Burger restaurants in Southern California in a wide-reaching scam.

Glendale Police officials said in a statement Friday that 26-year-old Tatiyanna Foster of Long Beach was taken into custody last month. Another suspect, 24-year-old Auriona Lewis, also of Long Beach, was arrested in October.

Police released images of $100 bills used to purchase a $2.53 order of fries and a $5.93 order of a Flying Dutchman.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office charged Lewis with felony counterfeiting and grand theft in November.

Elizabeth Megan Lashley-Haynes, Lewis’s public defender, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Glendale police said that Lewis was arrested in Palmdale in an operation involving the U.S. Marshals Task Force. Foster is expected in court later this month, officials said.

”Lewis was found to be in possession of counterfeit bills matching those used in the Glendale incident, along with numerous gift cards and transaction receipts believed to be connected to similar fraudulent activity,” according to a police statement.

A representative for In-N-Out Burger told KTLA-TV that restaurants in Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties were also targeted by the alleged scam.

“Their dedication and expertise resulted in the identification and apprehension of the suspects, helping to protect our business and our communities,” In-N-Out’s Chief Operations Officer Denny Warnick said. “We greatly value the support of law enforcement and appreciate the vital role they play in making our communities stronger and safer places to live.”

The company, opened in 1948 in Baldwin Park, has restaurants in nine states.

An Oakland location closed in 2024, with the owner blaming crime and slow police response times.

Company chief executive Lynsi Snyder announced last year that she planned to relocate her family to Tennessee, although the burger chain’s headquarters will remain in California.