How I Built This with Guy Raz - The Cronut and Dominique Ansel Bakery: Dominique Ansel

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Dominique Ansel’s invention of the Cronut — an inspired liaison between croissant and donut — was supposed to be a one-time indulgence for Mother’s Day. But once word spread about the perfect hybrid pastry, his Manhattan bakery was overwhelmed by endless lines and Cronut scalpers. Dominique eventually learned to manage the hype and grow his business while maintaining his craft. Named the World’s Best Pastry Chef in 2017, he has found an entrepreneurial sweet spot in three brick-and-mortar locations and a mail-order business, which will overnight a Cronut to your door, sans the line, and scalpers be damned.  This episode was produced by Carla Esteves with music by Ramtin Arablouei.It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Katherine Sypher. Our audio engineer was Robert Rodriguez.You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram, and email us at [e-mail]. And sign up for Guy’s free newsletter at guyraz.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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inspiring, and most importantly, fun. It's 100% free, and to sign up, just visit gairoze.com. That's g-u-y-r-r-z.com. Once you have 150, 200, 300, 300 people in line, I mean, those people were not going to get a cronut. No, for sure. Like only 50 people were going to get one. Yeah, maybe, and we had no rules. In the beginning, people were buying a dozen, they were buying two dozen, and then we're like left with like,

Nothing. But it was just a concern because we couldn't make enough. I mean, I remember this was covered on, like, national news. You had, like, camera crews outside the bakery. Many, many days where I had, like, reporters reporting live. You're running out of the bakery. Live from the Kroonut bakery. Because it was madness. So I had to hire a security to manage the line.

And all I felt like is, it's a nightmare. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how an arranged marriage between a donut and a croissant led to a perfect pastry called the Kronut and made Dominique Ansell's Bakery one of the best known in the world. There's an inherent tension between making an exceptional product and running a scalable business.

A really well-made, high-quality product usually takes time. and it takes expensive materials, and it's hard to scale, all of which is perfectly fine. Scale doesn't have to be the goal. The goal is to build a sustainable and profitable business, which is what Dominique Ansel's done, despite the temptation and the pressure to expand and go big. Now, you may not immediately recognize his name, but you will know the product he's most famous for. It's what got him global attention for a period of time starting in 2013. Dominique invented the cronut, a cross between a croissant and a donut.

For months and even years after its release, people would line up around the block in front of Dominique's bakery in New York just to get their hands on one. Soon after, investors and other folks with dollar signs in their eyes approached Dominique. Expand, they said, build a cronut factory. But Dominique resisted that, and today he's built a brand around just three bakeries and a mail-order business. It's profitable, sustainable, and most importantly to Dominique, it doesn't cut corners when it comes to quality. And he's now widely considered to be one of the best pastry chefs in the world. But over the years, Dominique's also learned how to be a businessman, had a splurge on things like butter and flour, but cut costs by learning how to fix generators and toilets himself.

For a guy who would be an honored guest at a Michelin-starred restaurant these days, Dominique Ansel didn't grow up in that world. In fact, he grew up in a working-class home in a small town in northern France where his dad worked in a factory. I grew up in one of the poorest town in France. I grew up in one of the poorest neighborhood in that town. And I remember growing up, I remember food was something interesting to me. because I don't think my family was the best at managing money.

Very often, like, you know, the second or third week of the month, we had nothing left. And so I was not starving, but it was not easy to come by and I was not eating, like, the best food either. And my mom was actually a terrible cook. It was so bad. And I think that's probably what inspired me to get to the kitchen. So, you know, when I was 15 years old, I was told that, you know, I need to get a job. I couldn't like keep going to university or anything like this. It was not accessible to me. You were not going to go to university. That was not your. No. That was not an option. But, you know, my parents never gave me any like guidance. They were okay with anything I want to do. So early on, I decided, you know, I figured that I was on my own. And I had to make my own choice, my own research. And I decided to, you know, to find a humble job. And I started in the kitchen.

This was at a local, this is at a local restaurant you're working at? A small local restaurant. That was a chef, savory chef. Yeah. So I did this program that was three weeks with an employer and one week at school. It was like a culinary school. Learning culinary, yeah. But my first year was just like miserable.

I hated everything about it. The people I was working with were just terrible. Abusive in every sense of the way. So they will like cut me with knives. Cut you with knives? Yeah. Just for fun. Look at me laughing.

Wow. The sous chef there was like smoking weed. It would like heat up the spatula by the stove, remove it from the stove, and I will come just see her my arm with a hot spatula. Wow. That sounds like hell. So this, you know, like this is, this is horrible. I would go to walk every morning, every morning waking up like a nod in my stomach in fear of going to walk. It will insult me, you know, slap me in the back of the head, like punch me in the shoulder, like all day long.

And luckily, luckily, a year later, the restaurant was sold to a younger chef. And he was tough, but he was a much better person. He started showing me and teaching me, showing me how to appreciate cooking, buying nice ingredients, and teach me how to work with them, how to cook it. And I started like developing the care and the love for what I was doing. So this really was kind of the beginning of your education. Clearly, you were on a track to become a chef. This is what you were learning how to, what to do.

And did you, what was it about that life that appealed to you? Did you like, I don't know, did you like the idea of making something and watching people eat it? Did you like the experimentation? So at that time, I had no choice. I had no choice to get a little bit of money to support the family. and I had no options to quit. Quitting was not an option. You needed the check.

You need it. You stick with it no matter what. But did you find that you were had a little bit of a talent for cooking? Did you, did you, anybody in that kitchen ever say, you know, you're a little bit better than the other trainees? Back then, no. You know, it took time for me to appreciate what I was doing and then loving it. And I think when you reach that level of loving what you do, this is where you really like blossom and you really like explore like cooking at a different level.

Got it. Okay. So you basically do that for, I think about three years. Yes. And I guess we should make this distinction because most chefs do not know how to do pastry. And most pastry, a lot of pastry people, they know how to cook but not as well. Because it's like if you're in baseball and you're a pitcher, you can hit. but you don't really know how to hit because you're not practicing hitting anymore.

You're just pitching. It's like, right? So, doing my training in the beginning stage. So I did two years in a restaurant with the same program, and then I did one year in a bakery. So that was my first taste of learning, baking. So I did work in a bakery for a year. I see. Okay.

You did. But what was it about baking and pastry that you thought, this is the direction I want to go into? Because it's really one or the other. Right? You got, I mean, if you're going to choose cooking, that's one direction. I'm going to choose pastry. That's the other direction.

I think I still love both. I think cooking is more like filling, tasting, seasoning, and baking is more like scientific. It's precise. It's science. It's weighing. It's also art. It's also like creating building from scratch. I think I was a lot more attracted to like those steps of building, understanding the science and the precision of it.

this was more matching my personality and what I wanted to do. I wonder, I mean, because you basically, you started to drop your resume off at different bakeries. Yeah, I decided to go to Paris, the capital, from the countryside, and to find a job in a bakery. So I knew nobody, I had no connections. No cell phone at the time. I still had this big, like, huge map. And I was completely lost in the city. I had printed out a few resumes and I would drive around for like,

hours, like for many days, and every time we'll see a bakery, I'll randomly like park the car, running the side drop of my resume. And I found a job at Pelteschi Peltier, which was at the time one of the oldest pastry shop in Paris. I will always remember this job because to this day, I think there I made one of the most beautiful croissant I've ever made. Wow. And I can say that I have, I have no shame to say it. I still like perfect my croissant every day. But the way we were making it. So instead of, you know, putting the butter inside the dough, we used to cream the butter in our hands.

So it has to be pliable, but not too soft, not too hot. Not melting. And you will spread it with your fingertip inside the dough in two additions. Wow. And only a few people can do this because most people's hands are too hot to handle the butter. Yeah. But I've always have cold hands. My entire life.

You have cold hands. I have cold hands, which is good for chocolate and, like, dough. Yeah. How long, by the way, does it take to make one croissant from the moment you start to pour the ingredients to the time that it's sold in the display case? It takes three days. Three days. So the first day, we mix the dough. Then you have to let it ferment, remove all the gas that from the fermentation, let it chill.

let it chill. The next day you incorporate the butter and you give all the folds. Then you cut it, you roll it. And day three, you have to let the rest of the night. Day three, you ferment it again and then you bake it. That's unbelievable. People don't know this.

They don't realize that something that takes you of like 45 seconds to eat. It took three days to make. Yeah, it's a real craft, you know. That's one of my saddest thing, you know, going up in France. I've been to like lots of bakeries. I love bread.

By nature, in France, people think that bread should be cheap. Yeah. And I, you know, I don't believe in that. I believe the bread should be a bit more expensive. It takes so much labor and so much time. Yeah. All right. So from, you work at this bakery, this patisserie, Peltier for, for you.

Okay, you move on to Fachon, which is now, if you go to Paris, there are a bunch of locations. And it's, it was, but I think when you worked there was just maybe one location. Yeah. Actually, they, for bankruptcy. unfortunately a few years ago, and they closed everything now. It was one of the most prestigious bakery and retail. And it's like the most high-end. They sold chocolates, right?

They sold all kinds of things. And fruits, vegetables, spices, coffee from all around the world. And you were hired to be, I mean, this was when you were hired, you were just hired as another pastry chef? So yes, I left Peltie after one year. And I walked into Fochon. because I knew it was one of the best bakery. I was a seasonal worker, so I was hired for the holidays from September to December.

So I was one of 30 people higher, actually. And towards mid-December, they called us all in a room. They told us they will keep one person only. And they had chosen me to stay. So I was supposed to stay for four months. I ended up staying for close to eight years. Wow. And when I was there, I was, after six months, I was promoted as the chef the party.

and then quickly into souschef. I was 24. They bought another like 10 locations. I was in the kitchen. I was in charge of a team of over 100 people. So you were just handed this team of 100 people. How did you even know how to manage 100? I mean, I was not by myself.

It was another chef. Yeah. Plus a lot of other sous chef and was one of the sous chef. So I was one of the youngest in the kitchen, actually. Yeah, because by the time you were 24, I mean, you already had eight years of experience in a kitchen under your belt. So you were very experienced. You were very young.

But how did you, I mean, how did you just learn how to be a boss? I mean, you know, I think my entire life observing was something that I was very good at. So growing up, I always observed my siblings, you know, all the things they were doing, all the bad things, all the good things. I always picking, choose what I want to do. And I think I was the same in the kitchen. So I've seen a lot of people, you know, I've seen a lot of chefs yelling and screaming. And it always made me feel uncomfortable. I see them putting pressure on people.

I see them like, that was not my style. Did you, I mean, you were rising up the ranks at Foshaun, right? Did you ever, while you were there, think, okay, eventually I got to start my own thing? Or were you just happy working there and being a part of that company? I think deep inside, since I started, I always wanted to do my own thing. I had some up and down into opening the business. Mostly looking back, I was scared of the financial aspect. Yeah.

I was always scared like how much it would cost, how much risk it would be for my life, and spending too much and taking risks. But deep inside, I always want to open my own thing. And I guess we should mention that in France, and in many, actually many countries, it's not like in the U.S. where you could just declare bankruptcy and move on. Like, if you start a business and it goes bankrupt, you're saddled. with that debt. Yeah, you are, yes. You have to pay for it. And that's why there's fewer risk taking. I mean, there's just less risk taking. I mean, I'm not saying that bank declaring bankruptcy

is a good thing, but one of the arguments as to why there's more business innovation in the U.S. is because of bankruptcy. Like, you could take the risk. Yeah, and you can still do it in France, you know, declare bankruptcy for a company, but there's a lot of, like, things that are attached to you personally. Right. And that is, it's hard to get out of. Yeah. All right. So you're working your way up at Foshan and you eventually get promoted to like corporate pastry chef, which I guess means that you start traveling around the world and sort of helping them to develop new stores in other cities. And then with all that travel comes this really major turning point in 2006.

You get a call from Daniel Balloude, who was and is one of the most famous chefs in New York City and even around the world. He calls you and he says, hey, I'm looking for a pastry chef. How did you even get on his radar? So we had some friends in common. They had mentioned my name and gave my number. And Daniel just calls me out of the blue and tells me about, you know, restaurant Daniel and how he's interested.

He's in my resume and he wants to talk to me. And a little bit of research, of course, about Daniel, the restaurant, what he was doing. I loved New York. I had visited before. And before I went to Daniel, a lot of people told me, you know what, it's going to be tough. He has high expectation. It's a very difficult job.

And the more I would hear this, the more will make me like, want to do it. So Daniel invited me to come to New York for a few days to do a testing for him and to meet and to see the restaurant. And I had prepared probably a, I think it was like four or five desserts plus a cake, some Vionnerosri, some Petitou. So I remember, like, he was sitting down on tables. I dropped the first deserts, come back, clean up, drop the second desert.

And I was standing next to him, he looked up. And he was like, so when can you start? I was like, excuse me? After the second dessert. And then he offered me a job riding in there. And then I know that, you know, eight weeks later, I came to New York with two suitcases. and I took a small apartment in Queens and I started working on Daniel. Wow.

So, I mean, this is, and this is like 2006, you were 28. This is like the beginning of the heyday. This is still before I think the Michelin Guide came to New York. It would come within a couple of years. And, but this was certainly, I mean, this was like about as good as it gets in New York City. What, I mean, what were you, what was your charge? Were you told, hey, just like. knock people out.

Work on things that's just going to blow their mind. No, I had no specific assignments just to follow the style of cooking and make some good desserts. I have to admit, at the time, I was very nervous because coming from, for sure, managing 100, 120 people in the kitchen to managing 10 people at Daniel. Piece of cake. Yeah. But add the cultural difference. Add the restaurant setting. Add the language barrier.

And all of this, that makes it like super challenging. A pressure cooker, right? Also because they were, I mean, I think three years after you arrived, they won three Michelin Stars. But I imagine that that's actually when the pressure really kind of goes up a notch because then you need to maintain that level of quality and service. Absolutely. It's a lot of pressure.

And one of the first things that Daniel say to all of us, I always remember, I've heard it before, but that's the first thing you say. That three mission star, it's hard to earn. Three mission star is much harder to keep. Yes. Yeah. So you end up spending about five and a half years there. At what point did you in your mind start to think?

Because the next thing that would happen is you would leave and start your own bakery. But at what point in your mind did you think, okay, I think I'm really. ready to take this leap and do this. You know, so it took me about like at least a year to get comfortable with what I was doing at Danielle to find my style first, by my style of plated dessert. And like after a year four, five, I was hungry for something else. I want to do something else. I remember actually going to see Daniel and talking to him about what I want to do,

open a bakery and showing him the business plan. and I remember going back to him like, hey, we should talk and we want to do something, we can do it together. It was like, no, Dominic, I'm sorry. You know, it's a little too risky. I'm not sure it's a good time.

Which is fine. I mean, probably part of partly because he didn't want to lose you. I think that was the biggest thing for him. Yeah. I remember, like, because of course he was not happy about it. And, you know, I think it was like

looking back, probably hurtful for him. You know, it was such a. close to him, it was almost like losing a son. But, you know, he's smart. He's, it has been nothing but supportive to me. And, you know, I would always be, like, grateful to have the opportunity of coming with him, to walk under him and to learn so much. Yeah. So when you decided to start your own bakery, which you founded in 2011, Dominique Ansel Bakery, on Spring Street. And so, first of all, how did you get the money to do it? I mean, how did you find the financing to even start a business?

So back then I was like looking for investors. I had reached out to a few people. I was talking like two, three people that were more or less serious. I had nothing. I mean, I had like, you know, a couple thousand dollars of savings. So I was hoping to get investor and, you know, I had this meeting with my designer to see a space on Union Square. I didn't walk out.

It went back to his Soho office and got off the trend. on Spring Street, walk by the bakery, and call me like, okay, this is the space here. This is bakery. You know, not too far from my office,

it looks in pretty good shape. Like, you should check it out. Oh, it was available for lease? Yes, it was available for lease. It was used to be...

And it was already had, it already had, it had already been built out, basically. It was, like, set up as a bakery. And I walk in the bakery and I fell in love.

I was like, this is the place. This is like, perfect. You had a little garden in the back. You know, it was not,

very pretty, was not very good looking. I could fix it up. And at the time, I was dating this girl who was in Hong Kong. She was a food writer. And this girl was my girlfriend and she became my wife. And I'd drag her into New York. I say, hey, why don't you come help me open the bakery? And she had a bit of savings as well. So we put everything. We had both of us on table and started this way. Wow. So she took her money, her savings, your meager savings, and you took out a lease, and you had to take what, a three-year lease or five-year lease out? Ten years, lease. Ten years. And I painted the bakery. I did some tire work because I did this from the kid, electrocuted myself a few times, changing outlets, you know, clean the toilet, fix the computer,

and we patch it up back up, and we opened the bakery. And, That's what we had, and we had from Paris. So this is 2011. You open this bakery up, and what did you want it to be? Did you want it to be like patisserie, Peltier that you worked at in Paris? Did you want it to be more like Farchant? What was your vision of what you thought it should be? No, I wanted to be Dominican's a bakery.

I want to be my own. I have to say, I have to admit, I was very innocent. back then and completely unaware of what they would take to open a business so we opened with four employees we had no managers

no I remember like looking at a bank account once it was like on a business bank account I had like $2,000 left and I was like how the hell we're going to make it my kitchen was probably

without exaggerating 15 feet by 10 feet well that was my kitchen That was one table, and the do-sheater was sitting on table. And so once you were ready to open, it's just four of you, and it's you, your then-girlfriend now wife, and two employees baking. You were going to bake everything and run the front of the shop,

sell, you know, cashier and everything. So that was just four people total doing everything. Yeah, that was just, that was insane. When we come back in just a moment, things get slightly more insane when people start camping outside the bakery. just to get their hands on a cronut. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz.

So it's 2011, and Dominique Ansel is just about to open his first bakery in New York. But of course, there are tons of bakeries in the city, especially cupcake bakeries, because cupcakes are really big at the time. And people are telling Dominique that he should make them too. So that was one of my pit-piv before opened the bakery because a lot of people were telling me to make kepcakes. They were telling me that a lot of French chefs have tried to open a bakery in New York and failed that I shouldn't do it. They were giving me all these advises without me asking. I mean, I don't mind cupcakes.

I've had more bad one than good one, but I never wanted to do cupcakes. But did you get any, I mean, you're such a small team. Did you have any, like, press or any articles written about the bakery or you just open the shop up? So since, you know, I was at Daniel, and Daniel, of course, is a star with all the media in New York and in the U.S. as well. People pay attention because I came from Daniel. I worked for Daniel for so many years, and people want to see what I do. Of course, it's one of the first thing that actually Daniel told me when I left. He said, remember, whatever you do, my name is attached to yours now.

So you better do well. And I kind of like smirk when he said that. But now I see it and I understand it. And so we had the New York Times, Florence Fabricca, that came to the bakery before we open, asking questions, see what I was going to do. And she came back after we opened as well to taste the food. And she, you know, she loved it. Yeah.

So she wrote this, like, beautiful piece on the New York Times. And I remember right after that, we were like, you know, busy-ish, not too crazy in the beginning after the New York Times article, I think it was like two weeks after we opened. We were slammed every single day. It was like madness. After her article came out? Yeah, I didn't realize the impact. Oh, she's a massive deal. I mean, she's like an old school New York Times food writer.

It's been there for a long time. She's brilliant, like knowledgeable about food. food. She's smart and I understand why people read her and why people like follow her. So tell me about your day, your average day at that time. You would get to the bakery at three in the morning because you've got to start the process of making the dough and proofing it. Exactly. So get three in the morning, start mixing the dough, laminated the dough. So that will be for the next day. Laminate means put the sheets of butter on, fold it. Exactly. Doing all the folds, getting everything cut and ready. Then at 8 o'clock, I will go to the service.

station. We have a little service station there where we do all the made-to-order egg sandwich and stuff like this for breakfast. So we'll help with that. And then I'll go back and prepare the pastries for the day. Everything was baked before opening or right at opening. Yeah. At the Kunya Man as well. Kuni Man is one of our bestseller. It's your like that caramelized, sugary croissant-like little roll. Oh my God. It's divine. It's like a flaky caramelized croissant. It's crasants. crunchy on the outside, like chewy and tender on the center. There was one of our specialty. And, all right, so those are ready by, so the pastures are ready by 11.

And then tell me about the rest of the day at the bakery. The rest of the day, I would prepare all the pastries, put everything out by 11 o'clock, and 11.30 start service. So we're doing all the sandwiches, made to order, all the salad, soup, everything for lunch. By like 2.2.30, I was done. I'll go back to the kitchen, start prepping for the next. day. Oh, wow. It was a little bit too much in the beginning, but it was, you know, looking back, it was fun. It was like, I was excited to share. I was excited to, like, to show what I could do that I didn't want to stop. I want to do more. Yeah. And what time did you get home? So, we closed the shop at 8 o'clock, and then I would, I had no dishwasher at the time, so I'll wash all the dishes, take out the trash, sweep out the floor, mop the floor. I will go home between like 10 and 11 p.m. So, wait, you would sleep for three, maybe four hours a night? Yeah, that was, I mean, I had no choice.

I had so much work to do. How many, how long did you do that for? I think I did this for probably like three, almost four years. Wow. That was a lot. I mean, how did you manage your health? I mean, that's just unhealthy. It is, it is unhealthy.

I don't suggest anyone to do that. I had no choice. I had the stamina, the determination, and I don't give up a positive. So we had nothing but my determination and me fighting every single day to make it work. Were you profitable from the beginning? No, not at all. No. No.

We lost a lot of money in the beginning. What were you losing money on? Because, I mean, was it just the cost of ingredients? I mean, you had very few employees. What was the... We were losing money on everything. Not so much the cost of goods where you have to build inventory, which I never thought of. You know, never think about building inventory.

It costs money. Staff insurance, benefits, all the stuff added. Rent, when it comes in, packaging, we start investing in packaging. Like, oh my God. We're just like bleeding money for like months before that could make it a little bit. You were still pretty young doing this and you were like 35, 34, 30. But, I mean, you'd gone from being the head pastry chef at a Michelin three-star restaurant with the attention that comes with that and the prestige to sleeping three hours a night and sweeping the floors and mopping the floors and doing the dishes and kind of like what you were doing 15 years earlier. Were there any moments where you're like, oh, what have I done?

No. No, because when it's your own, you fight for everything you have. I was living very humbly. They have many expenses. I have no kids. I was like living with my girlfriend at the time. It's risky, but I knew eventually it was going to work. We just had to find the right pattern.

Like, you know, even like how much you sell your pastry for? Is it really worth it? Would people buy it if you increase your price a little bit? You know, can you save on, start saving on costs? Like looking at all like the package. I remember calling one of my suppliers and asking him to like drop the price of the trash bag. It's like, excuse me, like it's too expensive. Of trash bags?

Yeah, you're buying a three millimeter of trash bag right now. That's a thickness for the trash bag. You can buy two millimeters or one, one is cheaper. I say yes, but one would break and people will start doubling out of the bag. So I want two millimeters and I want to try it. These are the big trash bags in the back and they give in the kitchen at night. You haul those into it. Yeah.

But two millimeters is probably. thick enough that's not going to break. Exactly. So I switch it. Okay. And I look at my numbers. Yep. And it was like shocking. It was like $8,000, over $8,000 of saving a year. Just for going from a three millimeter bag to a two millimeter bag, you saved $8,000 a year. Yes.

That's like those stories that you heard about, you know, when like they remove one olive from the first class salad, you know, United saved a million dollars or something. I think the most important is to build relationship with a vendor. You know, you need to get to know them. You need to get to know, you know, you have to make money as well. They have to make profit. But you need a reasonable pricing. And then building that relationship where when they buy, they sell you something, they sell you for the best price.

How did you get cheaper flour or cheaper butter? I mean, especially if the same suppliers are selling larger quantities to other places. Actually, this is going to sound like crazy and kind of intuitive. But during COVID, everything gone up. all the pricing on up everywhere. And I decided to import my butter and my flour from France. Wow. That's cheaper?

No, it's not cheaper. It's a lot more expensive. Right. But you differentiate yourself from the competition because the quality of the ingredients and the quality of the finished product is much, much higher. Like you want to give the best to your customers and you want to get the best price possible as well. But going back to that time when you were trying to save money, I mean, you negotiate the trash

bags. What else did you negotiate to kind of? lower your costs. I think not so much negotiation. It's more doing things myself. So if the fridge will break, I'll fix the fridge. There's an issue with plumbing. I don't call a plumber. I fix it myself. I cannot call it plumber and pay like a thousand dollars. I can't call a nutrition. Pay like thousands of dollars to fix small things. Sometimes like take them to fix that it's small. So a lot of like I'm going to research it. I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to fix it myself. Yeah. All right. How long? Do you remember?

remember how long? From the time you opened in 2011, Florence Fabricant writes a piece about you, and then there's lines, you know, it gets busier. But how long did it take before you hit you broke even? You started to hit profitability. Do you remember? I think it took us, I will recover our investment very quickly because, you know, we invested so little. Yeah. It took us about like four to five months, I think. It's pretty great. I mean, I've, I've had founders on this show who have billion dollar valued companies. You still haven't broken a profit. So there you go.

Yeah. You know, when you start with so little, every dollar feels like so much money. Yeah. And even, you know, like, you know, spending, like I remember my first check I wrote tomorrow, my vendor for one month was $10,000. And I took a deep breath like,

my God, $10,000 for one month. Yeah. All right. So you've got the bakery going. You're grinding away. working like a dog, really, every day. And then in 2013, the story I hear, I heard, is that you're thinking of a special pastry

that you can make for Mother's Day. So that would be in May of 2013. And you started to think about some ideas. What were you thinking about? To be honest, I was busy over one every single day and my girlfriend, again. And now my wife, she was like, hey, this is something like donuts. Maybe you can make a donuts for a mother's day.

A donut. I laugh at her. I laugh at her. I was like, listen, I'm French. I have no recipe for donut. And she's like, come on. And I was like, no. And then she asked me again.

And again, she's like, come on, you create it. You can come up with something. But isn't a donut generally fried? I mean, I guess you can bake them, but they're fried. Yeah, it's fried, yeah. Okay. So, and did you have a friar in the restaurant and the kitchen? Yeah, we had a little fryer, yeah.

Okay. You had a fryer, okay. I was like, yeah, I can try, but, you know, I really have no recipe for donuts. I can try this something. Right. I loved, love, love, croissant growing up, of course, like millions of croissant. And I was like, we'll do something. So I decided to like take those layer of a croissant, these flaky layers and shape them as donut and fry it.

Wait, so you made a, you basically took croissant dough shaped into a donut and you dropped in the deep fryer. The first one, yeah. And the first test were a disaster. It was bad. Sounds delicious, actually. It didn't work. Fried croissant dough? Yeah, it didn't work because, like, I mean, there's more to it.

It's not just a croissant dough. It's a special type of dough that resemble to croissant, similar techniques. So you need those layers, but you need to be, you cannot be too flaky. So it's a little intriguing. It took me about like two to three months to develop the recipe. But when you said, hey, try a donut. I mean, you yourself said, I didn't want to do a cupcake. cake because that's not me.

A donut's also very American. It's a very American dessert. Yeah, we want to do something for Mother's Day for the weekend. It was just for the weekend. So I tried over and over again, probably like 30, 40 version of it. And then it was getting closer. It was getting better. I was looking better.

So what were the things that you had to do to make that work? So I had to change the type of flour I was using. I had to change the... let's see the hydration of the dough. There's a higher hydration. So it's a little bit, it's a little softer. More water in the dough. Yeah, it's a little softer though.

So the more you add water, the more boeoshi you make it. If you cannot make it too boeoshi or too flaky either, it has to be just in between. I try different type of oil to fry. I use different temperature as well for the lamination, which is like kind of entreaty. He has to be, it cannot be too cold. If it's too cold, it's too many layers, too many layers, too flaky. So it doesn't work. And then when I was more or less satisfied with the texture, which took a while,

there was the hardest part. I play a little bit with the feeling. And I was like, okay, let's try it. And we're like, yeah, it's good. And we remember, like a friend of us was journalist. And he randomly without knowing that came by the bakery, we were testing it and were like, what do you guys doing? Like, oh, this thing, like, we're going to call it the cronut.

We're going to put it in the menu this weekend. A cronette. Crosan. The donut croissant. And it's not, it was just like, without exaggerating. Like, on the table on the corner, it was like, oh, let me take a photo. Push it to the corner. He took a photo.

And then it was like, cool. Like, I'm going to write about it. I was like, okay. He put it on his blog that was Grab Street at the time. This is Hugh Merwin, I think, right? Yeah, it was, it's true. Yeah. And then he put his article on the.

the blog on Grabstreet at the time. And then he called me this afternoon. And I was like, hey, listen, Dominic, like, I think you're going to be busy this weekend. My article went viral. I was like, what? When viral, what does that even mean? Your article on viral? It's like, well, I have over 140,000 link to my article and an increase of traffic on

the website of 300%. So I think you're going to be busy this weekend. I was like, hey, I have no idea what are you talking about. I'm happy. I don't know what vowel means, you know. It was just the beginning of social media. Nobody knew anything about it. I mean, he did write in his article.

I've read it. It wrote, a bold step forward for pastry. I mean, it wasn't just a little article about the cronut. He was like, he called this a bold step forward for pastry in general. I mean, that's kind of a big deal. So I'm not surprised it went viral. Yeah. Still, like people always ask me, why do you think it went viral?

You can't tell. There's so many things that got to tell. to this idea. I think first like the name is cool, this simplicity of like when you look at it, it looks like a donut. When you hear about it, it's croissant and donut. So you can visualize it without even eating. And by day three, day three of the article being posted, we had a look outside and I see a line and I see line stretching around the corner. So I go around the corner and it's going all the way down to the block to the area. end of the block, I was like, what the hell's happening? So I go count the people myself and I count 150 people before we open the doors.

In line before you open the door to get one of these cronuts. And I was like, what the hell is this? Like, what's going on here? And then it was just ridiculous. The line got longer and longer every single day. I mean, if you were, I read that the first day you only had 35 for sale. That's right. The second 50. and presumably you have to make more, once you have 150, 200, 300 people in line, I mean, those people were not going to get a cronut. No, for sure. Right? Like, I mean, only 50 people were going to get one.

Yeah, maybe, and we had no rules. In the beginning, people were buying a dozen, they were buying two dozen, and then we're like left with like nothing. And people were cursing at us. They were like, you know, angry and they get it. You know, you went in line like you don't know if you're going to get it or not. And very early on, I decided to, like, actually take care of the line. Going outside, letting people how many we have, how many we have left,

and making sure that everyone is aware of it. So if they wanted to wait or not, they could. But it was just like insane because we couldn't make enough. I mean, I remember this was covered on like national news in 2013. You had like cameras outside, camera crews outside the bakery. Many, many days where I had like reporters reporting live, you're running forward of the bakery and I had to tell them. From the Kronut bakery.

This is madness. People were coming, fighting in line. I had to hire security to manage the line. So what happens is that people were coming at 2 o'clock in the morning because they want to be first in line. They were getting there at 2 in the morning and just camping out? At 2 o'clock in the morning. People were coming to try to sell stuff to the line.

People were like resettling pastries on the street. Like I was overwhelmed. I didn't know how to handle this. I was like, I can't. I can't be outside and police everyone. and we need someone to help. People were selling these on Craigslist for like $100, $200 a crohn, not more than that. I mean.

I know someone that bought like two coronas and they pay like $2,000 each. That's ridiculous. It's totally. The other thing I read, which I think is amazing, is you did not allow your friends and family to cut the line and get a cronut. Yes. That you actually. That's correct. You actually were like, I'm sorry.

If you want to try. get in line. Like your friends, who were like, dude. Yes, I mean, I lost a few friends in the process,

but I wanted to be true to myself. You know, I was out of respect of people coming as early as 2 o'clock in the morning. If you want to try, you have to go in line. And the funniest part, I remember this one's like this guy,

it was a long line. I was at the door, actually, trying to help the team. This guy came from Los Angeles and told me he was this famous producer of movies. I didn't know this movie. this movie and this movie.

I love these movies. It's like, I made them. I was like, good, sir. Like, thank you very much. But the line is still right here. And he was a little bitter about it. But, you know, I was like, I can't. Like, we have to be, like, respectful of everyone.

It doesn't matter. I love that. It doesn't matter who you are. My family came at the time. It was like a coincidence. And I was supposed to spend some time with them. Of course, I spent no time with them. They want to try.

I'll say, okay, go in line. And they're like, you're joking, right? Like, I'm dead serious. Please go in line if you want to try. They didn't try it, but... So this went on for months and months and months. It's like... This went on for years.

Like, the staff was stressed out. The customers were stressed out. All I felt like is, like, it's a nightmare. When we come back in just a moment, as if the cronut craze were not enough, Dominique comes up with yet another viral dessert, the cookie shot. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

The great episode so far was Joe Clark and Kodiak Cakes, mostly because I like the product, but two, hearing how he stuck with it for so many years, and then when he made it big, he still gave his brother half the company back. You can tell that he is a very kind person, and it's wonderful to hear people that are kind and have a huge heart make it. And he certainly has made it. If you want to share your favorite episode of How I Build This, record a short voice memo on your phone telling us your name, where you're from, what your favorite episode is, and why? A lot like the voice memo you just heard.

And email it to us at hibt at ID.wondery.com. And we'll share your favorites right here in the ad breaks and future episodes. and thanks so much. We love you guys. You're the best. And now, back to the show. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2013 and Dominique and his team are learning to cope with the soaring success of the cronaut and the nonstop feeding frenzy outside their bakery. I mean, with just that size of kitchen, I mean, was there a point where you just said, you know what, we better just only make cronuts for the food? the next several months. And that's it. To answer your question, no. I always told myself very early on I don't want my creation to kill my creativity. And I refuse to turn into a corner shop and to do the only thing.

A lot of people came, talk to me about, like, supply and demand and, like, how I should, like, capitalize on the idea and, like, open a hundred corn shop. And I say, I say, no. And I say, I'm a chef. I believe in the craft. Maybe she will or call. called me like stupid or called me like innocent, but I love what I do. I cannot, you know, I was the people, my dad worked in a factory. I don't want to own a factory making the same thing. Every day, like, it was not a good thing, you know, until someone, you know, reach out to me on Twitter and they were comparing the current line to the line that

people go to wait for food in New York City for like their food bank. Wow. And this is when, you know, it's when I was like, hey, wait a second, like, you're right. Maybe we can do something with this and turn into something good. So I decided very early on to be involved with a lot of charities to fight against hunger because this is something like a kind of like suffer from going up and to help out. So the first auction we did, we went to a charity event and we sold 12 Kronaut for $100,000. A dozen cronuts for a hundred thousand dollars.

It is crazy. It sounds crazy. It's a blessing. It's beautiful. And to be a part of this, you feel like, okay, I have a bigger mission here. I have like, there's something more I can do. And we've done it many times again. And the price ran very high.

And people were willing to bid just to try the cronaut. Yeah. All right. So you, you know, part of the frenzy of this time period, lots of people, coming in saying you're doing it wrong, you've got to go all cronuts, you're being overwhelmed, and you've got to bake them, and you've got angry customers and demand. There does come, a pressing issue comes to your attention, which is, if you don't trademark this word, cronut, you will have created this thing and you will not control it.

You will not be able to use that word that you yourself started using. I guess somebody, one of your customers as a lawyer, approached you about this, right? So that's right. So I was actually a friend of ours who was a lawyer. And she saw this very early on. I think it was they did like four or five. She came to the bakery. She's like, hey, definitely should like trademark this thing, the chronite.

So she registered the trademark, chronite for me. And three or four days later, there were like 24, 25 applications for the same, from the same mark. Wow. This is a, yeah, there are a lot of scammers who do this. They'll basically trademark something that is popular that is invented by somebody else. Yes. And there were, you know, bakeries who started to use the word cronauter. They would spell it with a K, cronut.

And you guys did go after them. I mean, again, some people might say, oh, why is, you know, this successful Dominique Ansel going after these little guys? But you also, first of all, were not a, I mean, you were a small business. We're small, too. But the second thing is that you felt like there'd be brand confusion, that people would be thinking. wait, this cronet I've been hearing about in New York, I'm eating it right now. It's not that great, but they might not know that it's like they might associate or think it's the same thing. Exactly.

That's part of it as well. Brian Confucian, you know, people try to make all the product out of it. People try to, like, resell it, make money out of it. Our intention was not to be malicious or like to stop everyone from, like, being creative. Our intention was to protect our mark. And once you register a mark, you have no choice. If you don't protect it, you just essentially give up on it and you let everyone use it. By 2013, so by the end of that year that you introduce a cronaut, it was named, again,

it was named really the 25 best inventions of the year by Time magazine. And it was an accident, right? I mean, not an accident, but it wasn't like you were, from the story you tell, it's not like, hey, I'm going to come up with an invention that's going to revolutionize pastry, that everyone's going to talk about. Like, that really wasn't how you were thinking about this initially. No, absolutely not. I think it's a genuine, like, innocent, like, simple, like, you know, heartfelt, like story.

And even if you give me all the money of the world tomorrow, you cannot plan for this. You cannot expect the same, you know, kind of, like, frenzy. You cannot, like, you know, inception people into liking the idea or not. They like it or not for X, Y, Zer. Again, for a million reasons, they want to be. viral. You cannot give me all the money of the world and expect me to recreate something that goes viral. I have some great ideas for sure. What goes viral or not, at the end of the day, it's not me who decides people. Yeah, because I mean, a couple years later, you would introduce

the cookie shot, which is basically a cookie where you could fill it up with cream or milk and have a shot and eat it. And that's very popular, but it didn't have the same virality as the cronet. Oh, it went viral. But I think it was like overwhelmed. by the news of the corner. So yes, you're right. It's a chocolate chip cookie, shape as a short glass. It's a shot glass. It's lined with chocolate.

Yes, short glass. And we serve it warm, a warm cookie, and we pour vanilla-infused milk inside the cookie. So you drink out of the cookie and then you eat the cookie. So delicious. So it's a fascinating idea, you know. Like, it's, we created for, in partnership with a PR company that was launching something in South by South. West.

Yeah. And we brought there, we're like, oh, it's a cool idea. Let's let's do it for, you know, for this event. And we're like, oh, we're just going to do it for this event. And that's it. He went viral right here and there. We had 750 people lining out outside. I was like, this is, this is insane.

Not even the coronet that we created, something else that we're bringing. Wow. And the demon was so insane that we had to put it on the menu when we came back. So we're only. we were only at the time saving the cookie shot after 3 p.m. Wow. The reason why is because our line was so long in the morning that we couldn't have like double line

and like all these lines of people coming for our pastry. So we decided to do it after, like after school snack. We decided to do it after 3 p.m. Dominique, I want to go back to this idea of like, I understand you did not want to be a cronaut factory. And I think it speaks to your integrity. And it's a very, by the way, It's very French, a European notion of just like, look, I want to make the best product.

I don't care about maximizing profits, right? But now you are in America, right? And you are an American entrepreneur. And not to say that Americans are greedy. I became American a few years ago. I'm very proud of it. Right. But, but, I mean, just from a sustainability standpoint, I mean, I imagine there were people saying to you,

You have to, this is the golden ticket, Dominique. Like you struggled, you had no money. You grinded away to build this business. And now you have an opportunity to make tens of millions of dollars on this product. You need to strike while the iron is hot. And your answer was still no. I think it's a different approach. I think you have to figure it like, can I open a hundred,

shops to more and find the money for it? Easily. Right. Easily. Is this what I want to do today? Not necessarily. I don't want to run a factory, you know, producing like a million con at every day and ship it frozen around the world.

I don't believe in that. And I think I get it because they don't, right, it wouldn't, it wouldn't be the same experience of the customer either. You did, I mean, you did start to, with the success of the, Bakery, it made sense for you to open a larger facility. And then starting around 2015, you began to, or you decided that you will try to bring the Dominique Ensel Bakery to other locations. You opened a location in Japan, in Tokyo in 2015. And tell me the thinking behind it. Given how resistant you were to over-expand or to expand, or to expand.

Well, there's a different kind of experience, right? I think the idea was to bring our New York bakery and elevate it and bring it to Japan. Yeah. It's like, I was in love with the idea. I was like, I thought, you know, it would be like a great thing. And it was. It was this place was so busy. We were playing with another like 750 people in line.

Wow. There was like five to six hour waitline just to get into the bakery at opening. It was just insane. And this was a big shop. I mean, you had 100 employees there. I mean, this was, this begins a period where like Tokyo, 100 employees, then you open London, a bakery there. And then you would go on to, you know, you go on to Los Angeles. And then you expanded the location, a location in New York.

I mean, all of a sudden, you're building an empire, whether you want to or not. How did you manage that in your head? I mean, you had the teams in New York that you could see physically, but then you had all these, now you've got employees all around the world. Did, was that exciting to you, or did that become overwhelming? Did that feel overwhelming? I felt stressed out for sure. I never felt too overwhelmed. I think it's it, you know, every business has like local partners.

Yeah. You know, I can't do it by myself. I have an amazing team behind me. And the best person, you know, it's my wife today. the one that believed in me from the beginning. She runs the business with you. She runs the business. She runs everything I cannot run.

So she takes care of all the business side, the legal side, the front of the house side, and every other aspect that I don't. She's the brains. She's the brains behind the operation. You're the muscle. She's the brains. Yeah. She's a brain on the heart.

And I'm the most fortunate man in the world to have someone like this to support me. Yeah. as you started to expand, right? So London and then Los Angeles and then a full service restaurant in Los Angeles too. And then bakeries in Hong Kong. First of all, how did you control quality? I mean, how could you make sure that people were going into the London shop or the L.A. shop or the Hong Kong shop or even the Tokyo shop and they're walking out and saying, oh, the hype is right. We have high, very high standard in terms of quality of production.

And we have a lot of system in place to make sure we control the quality. And the team will go through a testing every single day. So they'll pick one pastry, one drink, and one other items that they will test among themselves and send a report on quality. So I can see the photo. I can just look, you know, just looking at a cross-section of a croissant, I can tell you if it was baked properly, if it was proof properly. If there's an issue with the baking, if there's an issue with the fermentation, I can pinpoint own this by just a kid in photo because, you know, I've been doing this my whole life. And this like system of check and balances like help us control quality at the highest level

possible. All right. Let's talk about COVID because COVID is the beginning of, I think, a sort of a retrenchment, right? Coming. COVID, a reset. It's a reset. I call it a big reset for everyone. Because obviously these restaurants were.

massively affected by the closures. And the first, I think the first closures, you decide to close the restaurant and bakery in L.A. And over the next two years, you would begin to really close down London and then Tokyo. And really just kind of make things a bit smaller, eventually Hong Kong. I wonder whether, you know, there's, there's, there's, Multiple ways, right, to think about a business. And there was a point where you had six, seven locations around the world. And clearly, if COVID didn't happen, you might have 15 now, right? And that might be a good thing. But it also with that comes a different level of stress and a different kind of business. And it doesn't always mean it's a healthy business. Like I think now, right now today, you are a profitable business, right? Yeah, we're very good financially. Like we're profitable business.

Like we're healthy, you know, we still have growth, so which is good. Yeah. It's true having like, you know, many, many different locations comes like more stress, more worry, more like, you know, diluting new time and you focus on things. Sure. But I think like if every good business is the most important is to surround yourself and build yourself of a team. You can't do it alone. No matter what, from day one, you know, I couldn't do it alone. I thought I could do it alone.

I would have never make it, you know, without my partner, without my wife. Today you've got two locations in New York, one in Las Vegas. And it's a, obviously, you've got a mail order business. When you think about where you are and where you started, working class family, you know, not a family that, not a life where you were going to imagine being in New York, being a famous pastry chef. You built this amazing brand. And I wonder how much of where you are today you attribute to just the hard work you put in, which was really hard, three in the morning until 11 at night for years. And how much of what happened do you think happened because you got lucky?

You just, it was luck and chance and fate. I think luck is part of it for sure. It's not the main thing. I think you have to try. You have to dare. Like, someone asked me once, would you have done this if you were in France? I told them, probably not. Yeah. New York is a very open-minded city that would like to explore. So long you give them good food at fair price and you respect your customers, like they will come back to you. They will let you try. They'll give you a chance. I don't think I would have done this in France. Yeah, I was lucky. I was lucky. I thought of the idea. I was lucky I tried. I was lucky. I worked hard for it. I was lucky. I met my wife. I was lucky for a lot of things. Sure, you can say that. I also work really hard for it. And luck. Luck is a part of it. Yes. But I think that if you're a good person in life, you attract good people on you and good things happen to you. That's Dominique Ansel, founder of Dominique Ansel Bakery. By the way, Dominique is still tinkering with new ideas in his bakery. every day, including one that has kind of a Willy Wonka feel. I want people to eat desserts with like zero gravity.

You want people to eat desserts in zero gravity, or you want people to feel like they are in zero gravity when they eat dessert? Oh, no, no, I want them to be in zero gravity in deserts. Oh, in space somehow, or like on an airplane that just dives and you go into zero gravity or cookie shots. But the milk from the cookie shots are going to be coming out of the cookie. It's in zero gravity. You see, like, you have to think differently.

By then, by the time you build, like, zero gravity chamber, I will have created, like, a lot of ideas of desserts that you can think of eating it. Like a marshmallow-y thing that comes out and you can just, like, eat it in zero gravity as it floats out. I got you excited with the idea. I'm in. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app. so you never miss a new episode of the show.

And as always, it's free. And don't forget to sign up for my free newsletter at gairoz.com. It's full of insights and ideas from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs. This episode was produced by Carla Estevez with music composed by Ramtin Arablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Catherine Seifer, and audio engineering by Robert Rodriguez and Kwayze Lee. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, J.C. Howard, Alex Chung, John Isabella, Elaine Coates, Carrie Thompson, and Chris Messini.

I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.