Pastry chef Dominique Ansel reflects on traditional bakery culture in France and argues against the expectation that bread should be cheap.
Disclosure
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…”
Insight
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.”
Disclosure
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.”
Insight
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…”
Disclosure
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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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…”