I wonder, looking at the ingredients list for just their vanilla cupcake, if the 2026 removal of all artificial dyes was the straw that broke the camel's back (thus the 12/31 11:59pm national closure). Private equity doesn't remake the wheel, and having to redesign all the cupcakes to meet the new US health standards was something that financially they decided wasn't worth more than just closing and selling off the assets. I mean, they would already be struggling with labor costs vs sale per unit (high hourly wages per employee mean you want to sell a certain dollar value per transaction to stay profitable, and you can only charge so much per cupcake), the decreasing popularity of cupcakes and sugared products from their high, their corporate national but still limited reach, etc.
For the ingredient design, their vanilla cupcake had "may contain: fd&c blue #1 (e133), blue #2 (e132), red #3 (e127), red #40 (e129), yellow #5 (e102), and yellow #6 (e110))". Now, that's likely line residue possibilities from their other cupcakes, but this was spot checking the 1st cupcake listed...