Jun 17, 2024 · 1h 3m · how-i-built-this
The Cronut and Dominique Ansel Bakery: Dominique Ansel
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Pastry chef Dominique Ansel recounts his journey from a working-class upbringing in France to international culinary acclaim, detailing how technical mastery, disciplined bootstrapping, and the viral invention of the Cronut shaped his artisanal bakery business.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 40.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 2.7 Guest teaching 2.7 Guest disagreement 0.6 Guy pushing back 0.5
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 46:05 Rejecting the factory Cronut scaling model
Dominique Ansel adamantly rejects conventional business advice to maximize supply and demand by opening 100 Cronut shops, asserting his identity as a craftsman who refuses to run a factory like his father did.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 53:40 Challenging Ansel on American capitalistic expansionGuy Raz pushes Ansel on turning down tens of millions of dollars in potential franchising expansion, questioning why he wouldn't strike while the iron was hot as an American entrepreneur.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 10:37 The three-day croissant fabrication realityDominique Ansel breaks down the complex three-day lamination and fermentation timeline required to produce a single croissant, completely surprising Raz who notes most people consume them in 45 seconds.
Guy holds their own ▶ 32:05 Raz cites classic airline olive margin optimizationRaz immediately connects Ansel's trash bag micromanagement to classic business lore about airlines saving millions by removing a single olive from first-class salads.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dominique Ansel's Impoverished Childhood and Early Kitchen Apprenticeship | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Guy Raz acts purely as a supportive interviewer while Dominique Ansel recounts his impoverished childhood and traumatic early kitchen apprenticeship in France. Raz interjects only with shock and empathy at the physical abuse Ansel endured. | |
| Choosing Pastry: The Scientific Precision of Baking | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Raz introduces an informed baseball analogy regarding the strict technical divide between savory cooking and pastry. Ansel explains why pastry's scientific precision and architectural nature matched his personality. | |
| Arriving in Paris and Mastering Croissants at Pâtisserie Peltier | 2 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Ansel educates Raz on the intricate three-day technical process of laminating and baking a traditional croissant, as well as the rare biological advantage of having naturally cold hands for working butter. Raz is astonished by the labor involved for a pastry eaten in seconds. | |
| Rapid Promotion and Management Lessons at Fauchon | 4 | 2 | 0 | 1 | Raz contextualizes French vs. American bankruptcy culture to explain differences in entrepreneurial risk tolerance. Ansel details his meteoric rise from holiday temp to managing over 100 staff at Fauchon at age 24. | |
| Recruited by Daniel Boulud and Relocating to New York City | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Raz contextualizes the fine-dining scene in New York in 2006 prior to the Michelin Guide. Ansel recounts his immediate hiring by Daniel Boulud after serving just two dessert courses and the intense pressure of maintaining three Michelin stars. | |
| Leaving Daniel and Founding Dominique Ansel Bakery in Soho | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Raz and Ansel discuss the founding of Dominique Ansel Bakery on Spring Street in Soho in 2011. Ansel details pooling meager savings with his partner and doing all the plumbing, tiling, and electrical work himself. | |
| Mid-roll Break and Upcoming Cronut Tease | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Raz highlights Florence Fabricant's influential NYT review and the cupcake craze of the early 2010s. Ansel explains rejecting the cupcake trend and outlines his grueling 20-hour daily operational schedule. | |
| Bootstrapping, Extreme Cost Control, and Strategic Investments | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Ansel reveals how micro-optimizing trash bag thickness saved $8,000 annually, prompting Raz to compare it to airline olive cost-cutting legends. Ansel also explains the counterintuitive decision to import expensive French flour and butter during COVID. | |
| Inventing the Cronut and the Viral Grub Street Post | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Ansel details the exact formulation challenges of the Cronut—adjusting flour, dough hydration, and oil temperature so layered dough wouldn't burn or collapse when deep-fried. Raz highlights Hugh Merwin's viral Grub Street post that ignited the frenzy. | |
| The Cronut Frenzy: Scalpers, Security, and Fair Line Policies | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Raz and Ansel discuss the escalating mania around the bakery, including scalpers reselling pastries for thousands of dollars and the arrival of news crews. Ansel explains his strict line policy, refusing special treatment even for Hollywood directors and his own visiting family. | |
| Mid-roll Break: Listener Voice Memo on Kodiak Cakes | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Following a mid-roll listener memo, Ansel explains why he refused to turn into an industrial Cronut factory and instead auctioned boxes for $100,000 for anti-hunger charities. Raz and Ansel also discuss the legal necessity of aggressively defending the Cronut trademark. | |
| Engineering the Cookie Shot for South by Southwest | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Raz presses Ansel on American entrepreneurial expectations to maximize profits and build mass production. Ansel defends his craft-first ethos and describes his remote quality-control method of assessing proofing and baking errors purely by analyzing cross-section photos. | |
| The Pandemic Reset, Reflections on Luck, and Futuristic Desserts | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Raz and Ansel discuss closing international outposts during the pandemic reset to focus on profitable sustainable hubs. The conversation concludes with Ansel pitching his vision of zero-gravity dessert dining. |
Statements from this episode (25)
Ansel's first kitchen apprenticeship involved physical abuse and knife cuts
“The people I was working with were just terrible. Abusive with, in every sense of the way. So they will, like, cut me with knives.”
Ansel: Cooking relies on intuition while baking requires scientific precision
“I think cooking is more like filling, tasting, seasoning, and Baking is more, like, scientific. It's precise.”
Ansel: Making a proper artisanal croissant takes three full days
“It takes three days. So the first day, we mix the dough, and then we have to let it ferment, remove all the gas that, that from the fermentation, let it chill. The next day, you incorporate the butter, and you give all the folds, and then you cut it, you roll …”
Ansel: Bread should be priced higher given the required labor
“By nature, in France, people think that bread should be cheap. And I, you know, I don't believe in that. I believe the bread should be a little bit more expensive. It takes so much labor and so much time.”
Chef Daniel Boulud hired Ansel after tasting just two audition desserts
“I dropped the first desserts, come back, clean up, drop the second dessert. And I was standing next to him and look, he looked up. And he was like, so when can you start? I was like, excuse me.”
Ansel: Three Michelin stars are hard to earn but harder to keep
“That's the first thing you say, say that three Michelin star, it's hard to earn. Three Michelin star is like much harder to keep.”
Daniel Boulud declined to invest in Ansel's bakery, citing financial risk
“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, you know, we'll do something, we can do it together. It was like,…”
Dominique Ansel Bakery opened with four employees and just $2,000
“So we opened with four employees. We had no managers, no, like, I remember like looking at a bank account once it was like on a business bank account had like 2000 dollars left.”
A New York Times review brought massive daily crowds within two weeks
“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.”
Ansel worked 20-hour bakery shifts on minimal sleep for four years
“I think I did this for probably like three, almost four years.”
Switching to thinner trash bags saved Ansel's bakery over $8,000 annually
“So I switch it.
And I look at my numbers.
And it was like shocking.
It was like 8000, over 8000 dollars of saving a year.”
Ansel imported expensive French butter and flour during COVID to stand out
“During COVID, everything gone up.
All the pricing gone up everywhere.
And I decided to import my butter and my flour from France.
No, it's not cheaper.
It's a lot more expensive.
But you differentiate yourself from the competition because the quality of the in…”
Dominique Ansel Bakery recovered its initial investment in under five months
“I think it took us, I will recover our investment, like, very quickly because, you know, it was, we invested so little.
it took us about, like, four to five months, I think.”
The Cronut went viral because consumers could instantly visualize the product
“I think, first, like, the name is cool. The simplicity of, like, when you look at it looks like a donut. When you hear about it, It's croissant and donut, so you can visualize it without even eating.”
Over 150 people queued before opening after Grub Street covered the Cronut
“And by day three of the article being posted, we had, I look outside, and I see a line, and I see lines stretching around the corner, so I go around the corner, and it's going all the way down to the block, to the end of the block. I was like, what the hell's …”
Secondary market scalpers sold Cronuts for $2,000 each
“I know someone that bought, like, two cronets, and they pay, like, 2000 dollars each.”
Ansel lost friendships enforcing a strict no-VIP line policy for Cronuts
“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 two o'clock in the morning. If you want to try, you have to go in line.”
Ansel raised $100,000 for charity by auctioning off a dozen Cronuts
“So the first first auction we did we went to a charity event and we sold the For a 100,000 dollars.”
Rivals filed 24 copycat trademark applications within days of the Cronut
“So she registered the trademark Cronut for me. And three or four days later, there were like, 24, 25 applications for the same, from the same mark.”
Ansel: Viral success cannot be bought, planned, or manufactured on demand
“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, Z, and again…”
Ansel refused to mass-produce and ship frozen Cronuts worldwide
“I don't want to run a factory, you know, producing like a million cornets every day and ship it frozen around the world. It's, I don't believe in that.”
Ansel's Tokyo bakery opening drew 750-person lines and six-hour waits
“This place was so busy. We were playing with another like, 750 people in line. There was like five to six hour wait line just to get into the bakery at opening. It was just insane.”
Ansel requires bakeries to submit daily photo quality reports of three items
“And the team will go through a testing every single day, so they'll pick one pastry, one drink, and one other item, so they will test among themselves and send a report on quality.”
Ansel can diagnose baking and fermentation issues just from a croissant photo
“I can just, you know, just looking at a cross-section of a croissant, I can tell you if it was baked properly, if it was proved properly. If there's an issue with the baking, if there's an issue with the fermentation, I can pinpoint this by just looking at the…”
Ansel believes his innovative bakery business would not have succeeded in France
“Like, someone asked me once, would you have done this if you were in France? I said, I told them, probably not. Yeah. New York is a very open-minded city that would let you explore. So long you give them good food at fair price, and you respect your customers,…”