Founder of Milkbar Christina Tisi thought she would be an auditor. Now she James Beard Award -Dispuent (2024)

TSI, 42, has loved all things of sugar and bins since she was a child in Ohio.

But it served as a pastry chef in Bouley, a Sceney restaurant in the center of New York City, which introduced her in the actual work of professional baking.Countless experiments and spun with her support from her dessert menu for a self -worked company: Milk Bar.And she did it without a graphic designer;MicrosoftORD.

In an interview withActiva, Tesi revealed her secrets of success and went through the greatest failures of all the Milk Bar - and why she "drinks for breakfast".

This interview is easily condensed and processed for clarity.

What is your background?

I was born in Ohio and grew up between Ohio and Virginia.My mother is the most passionate accountant you have ever met and my father is an agricultural economist - receives this - and fixes dairy prices, protect local dairy producers everywhere.Was born to do what I did, but I didn't realize that until much later in life.

When was it realized?

I don't think I realized what my father and mother did for a living - and how it really set me to build this incredible bakery empire - until the day before I opened the milk bar."Hello, we will open this bakery tomorrow."

He asked where I got my milk and I had something like that realized that it is actually such a part of me and just made it clear to me to be who I should be.

Baking was a very large part of my upbringing.My mother was a very passionate baker, but not the most competent baker.My grandmothers, the matriarchs of my family, my aunts - everyone didn't bake.Baker, because it was just something we did.You make it difficult, you are not doing well or whatever it was.

We bake oatmeal cookies or sugar cookie four edges or sliced ​​cookies-genus, real, really simple things..

At what age did you start cooking with your family?

The story of me who comes in the kitchen when a child goes like this: all the matriarchs of my family loved baking and they were a large part of our care.My grandmother has always made oatmeal cookies and she called us to pour or roll the sugar of confectionery and to be part of the recipe.

My grandmother realized that I was granted more oatmeal cookie dough than a 4 or 5-year-old, and then she kicked me out of the kitchen because I could not control myself.6 years old - where I started linking things.other way.

It was only before I was a teenager that I was actually allowed to switch on the oven myself, and I could really imagine these joins and look them all the way to something baked on a cookie blade and shared with others.

What was your favorite thing to bake?

I had several baked products that I was fascinated by and eventually obsessed with my teenage years.Huge batch of grain treats.

Sometimes the classic Rice Krispie Goodbits, sometimes it had a combination of different grains and I had other mix-ins.In eight squares for my eight girlfriends and we would meet in my locker and eat today's new grain treats and talk about life and are 10th lessons.

My first restaurant job was first before I went to university.I am the place of a women's club or other more suitable university organization, I was obsessed with the idea of ​​working in a restaurant.I have something on it, except for running my mother's fragmenting room at her accounting office and applies to be a hostess.There I was connected in the world of food.

My first year I went to the University of Virginia, then I switched to the study abroad in Florence.

What was your first job after university?

My first job after university rode a bakery on an island off the coast of New Hampshire.

I had no experience at all with running a bakery;

How is this opportunity come up with?

When my boyfriend was at the university, she had this summer job in a conference center on this island.

I am very much a cannonball personality.I love the idea.I don't need to know any of the details.Position because there was a bakery and you baked breakfast, lunch and dinner.You bake bread, you baked baked goods, you bake desserts, etc. and Lord knows what they told these people.

But before I knew it, I was on my way to Portsmouth, New Hampshire to go on a ferry to live on this glorious island off the coast and to come out of the day with my backpack.Home.

I received this book with old recipes that were really shining in this conference center.I don't make enough cookies.

I did this in the summer.And halfway through that summer I knew I would be in food.On my day off, when I went back to the mainland to the city, I said I will do this for a living.Ben 18 and are already lagging behind.

My idea was: I go to New York, go to culinary school during the day and work in restaurants at night.

I went to the French culinary institute on Broadway and Grand, now the International Culinary Center.00, non-stop, I was baking in class and got the tactical work.

Then immediately after school I would take my baked goods, give someone on the street and go to a restaurant and work at night.Bouley, just like a four -starNew York TimesFine Dining-Restaurant in Tribec.I thought I beat my ticket in good food.ofRestaurant in New York City.The top of the vessel, the top of good food, most inventive, most delicious food in Tribeca, founded by chef David Bouley.

I literally got my foot in the door, in the back door of the kitchen.A cake student from a friend and she is looking for experience.Alex Grunert is an incredibly Austrian cakes.

I had no idea what I was doing.She, core them, cube them, for hours.Here is a case of eggs, they scale.Here is white chocolate, it melts.

A small work, little by little, until I got a little more responsibility, a little more responsibility, a little more responsibility.I was not moved fast enough.The effectiveness of movement is really important in professional kitchens, the feeling of an urgent nature.

And you are.I don't know if you know this, but in fine dining rooms, if you are a pastry or paving team, you work until two o'clock in the morning because your last reservation is 11 or 11.30 am and after several tasty courses have to start dessert to the tableTo touch You Know, 1:30, 02: 00. You have to serve your dessert courses, scrub and enter and do it again the next day.

How long did you work in Bouley?

One and a half year.It is really important, in your first nice restaurant, which gives at least a year of dedication., The difficult part for me was that I had worked up on the pastry chef and I knew I wouldn't be a cake.Lens at Culinary School and Boulley.But I knew that I had so much more and so many more questions about food.

When did you start working at Momof*cku?

I started working on this crazy, cross-border restaurant called WD-50 in the Lower East Side under Chef Wiley Dufresne and the pastries, Sam Mason and Alex Stupak."And it was like a deconstructed egg-uptict that you would order for Brunch, but put together these really nice precise fine dining elements.

I loved the way they really took nostalgic food and this very imaginative, attentive, viewed life in it.

What attracted me in Momof*cku was what Dave did with tasty food and good food.

I was this very passionate chef and I was now more and more skilled pastries - pastor chef.Scene in a way that was logical.I felt that there was a huge gap.

My first job at Momof*cku - I think Dave and I are Joker that we called itenzPosition because it was a kind of everything.But to be honest, every job I once had at Momof*cku was to work for someone who is passionate, it is doing something good, but it is understaffed.Get in hand as many things as you are.

Originally there was no dessert menu at Momof*cku.It is because the boys in Momof*cku did not think there was room for dessert.Speed, efficiency and people in their high, boisterous environments, bring energy environments and to get them out and on.

I came in to support other parts of the restaurant industry, but I had this immortal love for dessert. Because that is what you do if you are obsessed with dessert.Dave knew that I had all this pastry experience.He knew I liked baking..

He said I think you should put dessert on the menu.Riff about what a fresh macerated Strawberry shortcake was.And I hurry it in the middle of the menu where we place all other market fruit and vegetable dishes to see what would happen..

The third night I started adding a few more things here and there and add dessert to the other Momof*cku restaurants.

Continue which different positions you had worked during your time at Momof*cku.

At Momof*cku I did everything, from working at the cash register of the Momof*cku SSAM -bar to opening and closing the gates - to rolling up the gates, opening the gates, ensuring that it was wrong and wrong that theWage list was done, and even handling operations.For example, I was on the noodles bars in the middle of a shift and started to enter water from the ceiling above because one of the neighbors above did not turn off their bathtub.

I also called entrepreneurs to design and develop new restaurant concepts, such as Momof*cku Ko.We also taught in English lessons for all our Spanish -speaking teammates, and I helped to find new teachers to continue this program.made all desserts for all Momof*cku restaurants.

When I did that, the space was immediately next to one of the Momof*cku restaurants a new landlord and came up with the lease and we were afraid that we would get a new neighbor, a new tenant who would somehow challenge us.More room to choose dessert.

I think he saw the fried items that I would even make a family meal, or make my colleagues before we came into the heat of the dinner service.Open a bakery.When I was a teenager, the idea was that the cookie cookies would be called cookies and I would sell cookies.

Dave would always make jokes and teases.At least support me to take the first step.But he said: "I know you well enough to know that you're finding out, Christina." And I assume the rest, they say, is history.

When you opened the milk bar, Dave had part of the part?Or was it completely yours?

In principle, the Dave and the Momof*cku group gave his loan to start, to open, to sign the lease to open activities.The basic structure of the dandelion.

We were essentially a large family that had two different operations.We opened the milk bar on November 15, 2008. It became very clear within a few weeks that running a bakery and running a restaurant group two very different challenges quickly quickly was that I told Dave that Dave that I had to find out howI could actually build all this so that it could rise alone.

How we think of team language and culture of a bakery that is open from seven in the morning to two in the morning is completely different from a busy lunch-and-dinner restaurant in East Village.

When I first opened the milk bar, we had an incredible team of four people who worked from doors open.7 To closing time was a really cool transition.

What is the story behind the name Milk Bar?

While he grew up in the midwest and in Virginia, Dairy Queen and these pages were very large part of my upbringing.Milk Bar was that it would look a bit like a modern dairy queen with a bakery display as an offer.

Milkbar was always meant for my vision on which dessert can and should be in the world.A restaurant group that is familiar and loved and trusted, the opportunity to use it as a springboard in the sweet part of people's lives, for me, was really the key to use the company.

Was the vision ever CEO for you?

Never in my wildest dreams I thought I would be CEO of this crazy, radiant bakery that comes to the fore in the lives of people.And make the dream bigger.

Has mathematics ever played a role in your recipes in the milk bar?

It is as if your parents tell you as a child annoyingly to make your mathematics work because it will be relevant later.Books in a growing company and understand the profitability of dollars and cent and the profitability of the gross margin.Do these things at the same time for my little children and I like boys, we laugh at this day.

What kind of desserts that offer a milk bar?

Milkbar has everything, from cookies to cake, cake, soft serveris and some - but done on our deadlines.We say we are a classic American bakery, but we change everything we know and love nostalgic, delicious baked items on the head.This is what we do.Chocolate chip marshmallow cookie.And not only have a chocolate chop, but we have a chocolate cookie with cakes and chips and chips and grahamcrackers and painted coffee and butter block chips because salty sweet cookies have endless options.

Vanillais is also great.But we serve an ice called grain milk and it tastes like it sounds.

And we love cake.But come now;Most cake is chocolate cake, vanilla glaze.

What is your favorite creation?

It's like choosing a favorite child.What I want to say is that I have a favorite creation based on a specific atmosphere of the day.When I have my cup of coffee in the morning, wake up the taste buds with a cup of coffee.

When I have jumped a lunch, corn cookie because you know it is corn in it and I get my vegetables and my cookies save time.Bite -size.The are lightweight and they give you permission to snack.Crunchy brown butter chocolate chip is my current favorite.Fudgy bit from cake.kornmilkis late in the evening, because the bowl-of-cerial moment is something that always comes back to me.

And were you the one who came up with all these ideas, or was it a collaboration?

There is no one in the team - it is a saying for a reason.I always joke with the team that I am the one in front of the camera and things for all of us Milkbar -the team of the past 16 years, has their fingerprints on our menu.

I really believe in it as a way of working and that is a large part of the backbone of Milk Bar..

What is the most popular dessert?

Fighting for the first place is the brown butter super crunchy cookie in the courses of the supermarket such as entire foods or sprouts.Mother has always made milk bars.Goey, buttery, sugary and beautiful.Compost cookie, cornflake cookie, marshmallow cookie, confetti cookie and then grain milk because it is grain, but they always pull it out.

Do your parents play a role in the milk bar?

My father, the agricultural economist - the milkman if you want - he knows all dairy producers.Business growth, or we open a bakery in a brand new market, it is always like Digskulle looks at this guy.

How do you think Milk Bar is at a time when many new dessert chains come on the market?

Dessert is one thing that everyone is enthusiastic about.There are dessert concepts on the left and right, there are dessert trends online, offline.Someone who squeezes a bunch of wild, crazy kitchen-singing things into a cookie, it's pretty cool.

It is our cute 16 -year birthday, and to think about how we have contributed to what food is, what the dessert scene is and what it will stay - it's great.Do it with relative blinkers, think of: what do we believe that is cool?How the world works and to stay exactly who you are and to believe and know that it will always be good enough, if not the secret behind your success.

What do you attribute to your success?

The secret of my success is one day at the same time.

It is one recipe at the same time.

When I got up on Boulley, you would call in the heat of the service and be shouted and taken a few hooks down.The game.If you do it, just keep going.

You will have successes and you will have pitfalls.

Has anyone ever given you business advice on the road that you still remember today?

My business belly mother has so many lines.Bigger image.

Taylor Swift had a dandelion on his 34 -year birthday.The you that you happened?

We had no idea.We burn other creative and other people who inspire us and bring things that are happy and magical and positive in life.

You also have a large follow on social media and a club.

Milkbar lives in real life in our bakeries.We live online through our care packages and in the courses of the supermarket.I started baking club.Fantastic name, right?

During the pandemic I started it because we were all alone, we were all separated in our small life and small worlds.Indoors, I thought, how should I show up for people with dessert?It's like my reason to be.

So I just went online one day and I said: hello, I want to start a baking club.14 with a murderous playlist and we jump in immediately.

It has become this incredibly large, broad, happy community of people who are everywhere in the United States who stand up and show., you have achieved this incredible thing.And maybe you also have a reason to enter and share the world.

How often do you bake?

I bake almost every day, what a surprise can be for no one.I am always baked on the clock if you want.I bake to the bakeries.Dessert, because this is where my inspiration often comes from.

Do you need your company at Bootstrap at all?

Yes.Building a company can be done without the people in the industry to start, especially if you don't have the financial resources we didn't have in the beginning.

But every year at Milk Bar I think of the double and triple of ourselves.are part of it.

I want to be very clear that there was no business plan or fundraising to start the milk bar.But for me the basis was.Do not have the financial resources and I used them and still use them today.

You don't need a lot of money to start a good business, but you have to start somewhere and you start in the small one and you build and you grow.And you discover what works like you keep doing and what doesn't work while you stop doing.

What is the story behind your logo?

People could not first find the door of the milk bar because we were halfway through a dark block of 13th Street.And I thoughtX,,Y,Inz.But if I can hang a plateto celebrateIt is clear enough that people will see some light and perhaps go down the block and find us.This was beforeGoogleCard was one thing.

And then I thought, okay, I just make a plate that says Milk Bar.But Milk Bar is quite long if you actually start blowing it up.Okay, what would it look like?I started assessing the different fonts on Microsoft Word, and brush script medium felt like the real, classic side-of-the-road vanilla sauce.

And in the longest time, milk would only return the search expressions, dandelion as the top expression because people still think that our name is sometimes milk because of this funny, italic pink neon sign and logo.Cards.it has become part of the iconic recipe that has been a milk bar for the past 16 years and it is just brush script medium on Microsoft Word.

Did you have other failures with dessert?

We have had so many failures in Milk Bar.And I say that with a smile on my face, because you are a big chef, you really, really, really in love for failure., tasty or sweet, you have gone through so many failed attempts to get a good baked chicken or a great layer cake.

We have so many good ideas that did not do what they needed from the point of view of menu, but also from a business point of view.T is more logical.Because of the pandemic we had this large DTC care package and an e-commerce tree.And where we will be.

But I think when you are inside, you should never do anything that you are not very passionate about.Not a good idea for this thing. And you must also know when the world, your customers and your team sometimes tell you: "It's not for us."

I recently tried to add how many innovations we have brought to life for 16 years.Soon we will be so enthusiastic about what the future has, what we chase, which we are passionate about.

It is about finding out how you can show up and the life of life, and bring your stickiness and make you feel something great.