The Ledger
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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.”
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…”
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.”
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: 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 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,…”
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: 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,…”
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.”
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.”
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 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'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: 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 …”
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.”
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.”