The Cronut and Dominique Ansel Bakery: Dominique Ansel

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29:58Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2011 and Dominique Ancel 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 pivs before I opened the bakery, because a lot of people were telling me to make cupcakes. 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 telling me, they were giving me all these advices without me asking.

30:39I mean, I don't mind cupcakes. You know, I've had more bad one than good one, but I never, 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? and so since you know i was at daniel and daniel of course is a star with all the all the media in in new york and in new york yeah in the u.s as well um people pay attention because i came from daniel i worked for daniel for so many years and people want to see what i what i do so of course like 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 no no i see it and i understand it and uh so we had uh the new york times florence fabrica that came to the bakery before we opened 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 beautiful piece on the New York Times.

31:49And 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 and has been there for a long time. She's brilliant, like knowledgeable about food. She's smart. And I understand why people read her and why people like follow her. So tell me about your average day at that time. You would get to the bakery at 3 in the morning because you got to start the process of making the dough and proofing it.

32:34Exactly. So get there at 3 in the morning, start mixing the dough, laminate the dough. So that would be for the next day. Laminate means put the sheets of butter on, bold 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. The Cunyaman as well. Cunyaman is one of our best sellers.

33:08It's like that caramelized, sugary, croissant-like little roll. Oh, my God. It's divine. It's like a flaky caramelized croissant. Crunchy on the outside, like chewy and tender in the center. That was one of our specialties. And all right, so the pastry is 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 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 eight o 'clock and then I had no dishwasher at the time, so I would wash all the dishes, take out the trash, sweep out the floor, mop the floor.

34:15I would go home between like 10 and 11 p.m. So 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 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 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 and I stay positive. So we had nothing and nothing but my determination and me fighting every single day to make it work.

35:00Were you profitable from the beginning? No, not at all. No. No. We lost money. 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, I never think about building inventory. It costs money. Staff, insurance, benefits, all the stuff added. rent when it comes in packaging we start investing packaging like oh my god like which is like bleeding money for like months before we like could make a little bit you were still pretty young doing this and you're like 35 34 35 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 like 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 you know i was living very humbly i didn't have any expenses i have no kids you know it was like Like living with my girlfriend at the time, it's risky, but I knew eventually it was going to work.

36:32We just had to find the right pattern. Like, you know, even like how much you sell your pastry for. Is it like really worth it? Will 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 packaging. I remember calling one of my suppliers and asking him to like drop the price of the trash bag. He's like, excuse me, it's too expensive. Of trash bags? Yeah, you're buying a three millimeter trash bag right now. That's the thickness of the trash bag. You can buy two millimeters or one. One is cheaper. I say, yes, but one will break.

37:08And people will start doubling it back. So I wanted two millimeters. 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 it'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 3mm bag to a 2mm 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.

37:40You 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 like get to know them. You need to get to know, you know, they 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.

38:14But during COVID, everything gone up. All the pricing gone 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. 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, you negotiate the trash bags. What else did you negotiate to lower your costs?

38:48I 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 it a plumber. I fix it myself. I cannot call it a plumber and pay like$1 ,000. I cannot call it a nutrition, pay like$1 ,000 to fix small things. Sometimes it takes them a minute to fix that is 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 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.

39:23But how long did it take before you broke even? You started to hit profitability. Do you remember? I think it took us, I will recover our investment like 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 had founders on this show who have billion dollar valued companies who 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 to one of my vendor for one month was$10 ,000.

40:04And 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, now my wife, she was like, hey, this is something like donuts. Maybe we can make a donut for Mother's Day. A donut. I laughed at her.

40:52I laughed at her. I was like, listen, I'm French. I have no recipe for donuts. And she was like, oh, come on. I was like, no. And then she asked me again and again. She's like, come on, you're creative. You can come up with something. But isn't a donut generally fried? I mean, yes, you can bake them, but they're fried. Yeah, it's fried, yeah. Okay. And did you have a fryer in the restaurant, in 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. so I can try something. I loved, loved, loved croissant growing up.

41:23Of course, I packed millions of croissant. And I was like, maybe I'll do something. So I decided to take those layers of a croissant, these flaky layers, and shape them as donuts and fry it. Wait, so you basically took croissant dough, shaped into a donut, and you dropped it in the deep fryer. The first one, yeah. And the first taste was a disaster. It was bad. Sounds delicious, actually. It didn't work. Fried croissant dough? Yeah, it didn't work because there's more to it. It's not just a croissant dough. It's a special type of dough that resembles a croissant, similar techniques. So you need those layers, but you cannot be too flaky.

42:03So it's a little tricky. It took me about 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 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 versions of it. And then it was getting closer. It was getting better. It 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.

42:41I had to change the dehydration. 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 bouillot-shy you make it. Yep. If you cannot make it too bouillot-shy or too like too flaky either, it has to be just in between. I did try different type of oil to fry. I use like different temperature as well for the lamination, which is like kind of intuitive. It 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.

43:21And then when I was more or less satisfied with the texture, which took a while, it was the hardest part. I played a little bit with the feeling. And I was like, okay, let's try it. And we're like, yeah, it's good. And I remember a friend of ours was a journalist. And he randomly, without knowing, came by the bakery. We were testing it. And we're like, what are you guys doing? like oh this thing like it's we're gonna call it the cronut we're gonna put in the menu this weekend yeah a cronut croissant the donut croissant and it's not it was just like without exaggerating like on the table on the corner was like oh let me take a photo push it to the corner he took a photo and then he was like cool like i'm gonna write about it i was like okay he put it on his uh on his blog that was uh grub street at the time this is this is hugh merwin i think right yeah it was It's you, yeah.

44:10And then he put his article on the blog on Grab Street at the time. Yeah. And then he called me this afternoon. And he was like, hey, listen, Dominic, I think you're going to be busy this weekend. My article went viral. I was like, what? Went viral? What does that even mean? Your article went viral. He was like, well, I have over 140 ,000 links to my article and an increase of traffic on the website of 300%. So I think you're going to be busy this weekend. And I was like, I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm happy. I don't know what viral means. You know, it's just the beginning of social media.

44:44Nobody knew anything about it. I mean, he did write in his article, I've read it. He 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, I still, like people always ask me, Why do you think it went viral? You can't tell. There's so many things that got attached to this idea. I think first, like the name is cool. The simplicity of like, when you look at it, it looks like a donut. When you hear about it, it's croissant on donut.

45:25So 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 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 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.

46:06I 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 were like, left with like nothing. And people were cursing at us. They were like, you know, angry. And I get it. You know, you wait in line. Like, you don't know if you're going to get it or not.

46:41And very early on, I decided to, like, actually take care of the line. Going outside, letting people know 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 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 in front of the bakery. And I had to tell them. Live from the Cronut Bakery. This is madness. People were coming, fighting in line.

47:15I 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 wanted 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 like sell stuff to the line. People were like resending 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 cronut, more than that. I know someone that bought like two cronuts and they pay like$2 ,000 each.

47:54That'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 lost a few friends in the process, but I wanted to be true to myself. 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. The funniest part, I remember this one, this guy, it was a long line. I was at the door actually trying to help the team.

48:33this guy came from Los Angeles and told me he was a famous producer of movies and I was like, oh, you know this movie and this movie I was like, yeah, I love these movies I made them I was like, good sir, thank you very much but the line is still right here and he was a little bitter about it but I was like, I can't we have to be respectful of everyone when it doesn't matter 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 say, okay, go in line. And they're like, you're joking, right?

49:10Like, 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.

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51:35Make this holiday season your best yet at klaviyo.com. 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 Built This, record a short voice memo on your phone telling us your name, where you're from, what your favorite episode is, and why.

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52:52Hey, 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 cronut 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 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, talked to me about like supply and demand and like how I should like, you know, capitalize on the idea and like open a hundred corner shop.

53:40And I said, no. And I say, I'm a chef. I believe in the craft. maybe sure call me like stupid or call me like innocent but i love what i do i cannot you know i always tell people my dad worked in the factory i don't want to own a factory making the same thing every day like it was not it was not a good thing you know until someone you know reached out to uh to me on twitter and they were comparing and they cannot line to uh the line that people go to to wait for food in New York City for like the food bank. Wow. And this is when, you know, it's when I was like, hey, wait a second. Like, you're right.

54:22Maybe 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 I can 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 cronuts for$100 ,000. A dozen cronuts for$100 ,000. 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. There's something more I can do. And we've done it many times again and the price went very high and people were willing to bid just to try the cronut.

55:09Yeah. 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 got to go all cronuts. You're being overwhelmed and you 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 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, a lawyer, approached you about this, right? That's right.

55:45I was actually a friend of ours who was a lawyer. And she saw this very early on. I think it was day like four or five. She came to the bakery. She's like, hey, definitely should like trademark this thing, the Cronut. So she registered the trademark Cronut for me. And three or four days later, there were like 24, 25 applications 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 bakeries who started to use the word cronut or they would spell it with a K, cronut.

56:23And you guys did go after them. I mean, again, some people might say, oh, why is this successful Dominique Ancel 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 cronut 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. Exactly. That's part of it as well. Brand confusion. You know, people try to make all the product out of it.

56:59People 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. The 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 introduced a cronut, it was named again – it was named one of 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.

57:42Like that really wasn't how you were thinking about this initially. No, it's 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 zero and again for a million reasons they run viral yeah you cannot like give me all the money of the world expect me to recreate something that goes viral i have some great ideas for sure what goes viral or not it's 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.

58:31And that's very popular, but it didn't have the same virality as the Cronut. Oh, it went viral, but I think it was like overwhelmed by the news of the Cronut. So yes, you're right. It's a chocolate chip cookie shaped as a shot glass. It's a shot glass. It's lined with chocolate. Yes, shot 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 Southwest.

59:10Yeah. And we brought there. We're like, oh, it's a cool idea. Let's do it for, you know, for this event. And we were like, oh, we're just going to do it for this event. And that's it. It went viral right here and there. we had 750 people lining out outside i was like this is this is insane not even the corner that we created something else that we're bringing wow and the demand 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 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 after 3 p.m.

1:00:01Dominique I want to go back to this idea of like I understand you do not want to be a cronut factory I told and I think it speaks to your integrity and it's a very by the way it's a very French and 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 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.

1:00:42Like 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 think of it like, can I open a hundred shops tomorrow? Yes. And find the money for it? Easily. Right. Easily. Is this what I want to do today? Not necessarily. And I don't want to run a factory, you know, producing like a million cornets every day and ship it frozen around the world. I don't believe in that.

1:01:26And I think I get it because they don't, right, it wouldn't be the same experience for 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 decided that you will try to bring the Dominique Ansel 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. Well, it's a different kind of expansion, right? I think the idea was to bring a New York bakery and elevate it and bring it to Japan.

1:02:16Yeah. I was in love with the idea. I thought it would be like a great thing. And it was. This place was so busy. We were playing with another like 750 people in line. Wow. It was like five to six hour wait line just to get into the bakery at opening. It was just insane. And this was a big shop. 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 and then you would go on to 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 you're building an empire, whether you want to or not.

1:03:02How 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 the 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, you know, every, every business has had like local partners. Yeah. You know, I can't do it by myself. I have, 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.

1:03:38She 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 and the heart. And I'm the most fortunate man in the world to have someone like this to support me. Yeah. 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?

1:04:19I 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 standards 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 item. So they will test among themselves and send a report on quality. So I can see the 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.

1:05:01I can pinpoint this by just looking at the 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? COVID, a reset. It's a reset. I call it the 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 LA. 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.

1:05:57I wonder whether, you know, 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 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 a profitable business. Like, we're healthy, you know. We still have growth, which is good.

1:06:41It's true, having, like, you know, many, many different locations comes, like, more stress, more worry, more, like, you know, diluting your 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 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 made 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, not a family that – not a life where you were going to imagine being in New York, being a famous pastry chef.

1:07:37You 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, 3 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 mean i think luck is part of it for sure it's not the main thing um 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 said 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 I was like, they will come back to you.

1:08:21They will let you try. They will 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 worked really hard for it. And luck is a part of it, yes. But I think that if you're a good person in life, you attract good people around you and good things happen to you. That's Dominique Ancel, founder of Dominique Ancel 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.

1:09:00I 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 desserts? Oh, no, no. I want them to be in zero gravity eating desserts. 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 shot is going to be coming out of the cookie. It's in zero gravity. You see, you have to think differently. By then, by the time you build that zero gravity chamber, I would have created a lot of ideas of desserts that you can think of eating yet.

1:09:39Like 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 GuyRoz.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 Erablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Catherine Seifer and audio engineering by Robert Rodriguez and Kweisi Lee.

1:10:20Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, JC Howard, Alex Chung, John Isabella, Elaine Coates, Kerry Thompson, and Chris Messini. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

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