I’m sure you’ve all seen the cake. A cup of it, technically.

Layers of soft vanilla cake under a flat sheet of frosting, the whole top pressed into a dense, edge-to-edge crust of tiny round sprinkles, sold for eleven dollars on the Upper East Side (UES), where people have lined up before dawn and, in at least one case, sent someone ahead with a folding chair. Within weeks, the food world had taken notice. At the height of the frenzy, Google Trends data showed that search interest in the term “dot cake” spiked by more than 850% in a single week, reaching an all-time high. Crumbl put out a version. Shake Shack ran a one-day drop in the West Village. Crave Cookies announced their own called the Crave Dot Cake. At least half a dozen more bakeries and chains followed within weeks, from Pinkbox Doughnuts out of Las Vegas to a cupcake shop on Newbury Street in Boston.

Most of what has been written about it has focused on the cake. What I keep coming back to is the packaging, and what it low-key solved for an entire industry.