Pod Insights How I Built This with Guy Raz Live Episode! Milk Bar: Christina Tosi About this episode For Christina Tosi, baking wasn't just a delicious childhood hobby – it was a daily creative outlet and a way to blow off steam. After college, she went to culinary school and honed her pastry technique at high-end restaurants in NYC. But she also craved the opportunity to make unfussy, nostalgic desserts like the ones she grew up eating. So in 2008, Christina opened her first Milk Bar bakery in the East Village, with the help of her mentor, Momofuku chef David Chang. Soon, people from around the country were calling her up, begging for her gooey pies, confetti birthday cakes, and pretzel-potato-chip cookies. Today, Milk Bar has spread to 16 locations, and reportedly brings in tens of millions of dollars a year. This show was recorded live at The Town Hall in New York City.
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Transcript 11,908 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 Speaker 00 I just remember my BlackBerry kept buzzing and buzzing. And I was like, what is going-- like, did the bakery catch fire? Is my family OK? What could this possibly be? And I had all these voicemails. And I have-- my favorite voicemail was from this woman in Kansas City, who I think maybe was someone's grandma. And she was just like, well, I heard, you know, Anderson Cooper talk about this crack pie. And I just, I'm never going to make it to New York. So like, would you mind shipping me one? And it was like, are you going to tell her? Are you going to call her back and tell her no? Because I was not going to call her back and tell her no. And we now have an online business where you can email us. And that is like, when opportunity knocks, what are you going to say?
0:46 Speaker 00 Like, mm, not today. When it's time to rise to the occasion, you rise.
0:58 Guy Raz? From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
1:09 Guy Raz? I'm Guy Raz. And on the show today, how Christina Tozzi's passion for pie and cookies led her to open Milk Bar, a multimillion-dollar sweet shop that's reinventing nostalgic American desserts.
1:27 Guy Raz? We absolutely love food stories on this show. When we had Alice Waters on, I could have listened to her talk about strawberries for the entire hour or spent the whole interview with Jenny Britton-Bauer hearing about the molecular structure of her rich, dense Jenny's Splendid Ice Cream. There's a special creativity about food and also something else. Unlike a tech device or a product that requires sophisticated machine tooling to build, food stories just seem a tiny bit more accessible, almost like you hear it and think, I could do that. Now, before I get carried away, let's be clear about one thing. Coming up with an amazing burrito, or burger, or ice cream is hard.
2:11 Guy Raz? But it's even harder to produce it at scale and keep the quality high. Especially if you are as obsessed about the details as Christina Tozzi. But the funny thing is, if you've ever seen her Milk Bar Pie, or her Compost Cookie, you would never know. Because in some ways, they look like the least obsessed over desserts in the world. The cookie is a jumble of oats, and butterscotch, and potato chips, and pretzels. The Milk Pie is a gooey mixture of butter, and brown sugar, and cream, and eggs. Her cakes are unfrosted on the sides. But the moment you bite into any of those treats, I'm willing to bet, you will freak out. Because that's when you begin to understand Christina's level of precision.
2:56 Guy Raz? The exact amount of chocolate, or cream, or vanilla. The perfect crumb on the cake. These are the products that Christina Tozzi sells at her Milk Bar bakeries. But what she's really trying to sell is joy. A moment. A small and relatively affordable indulgence. All of this from a kid who was raised on junk food, and ended up deciding to learn to become a pastry chef. For several years, Christina worked in some of the best restaurants in New York, until she became a logistics manager for David Chang. David's one of the most influential chefs in America, who opened a chain of Asian-themed restaurants under the name Momofuku. And with his encouragement, Christina eventually founded Milk Bar.
3:41 Guy Raz? The bakery has since spread to 16 locations across the country, with a cult following and an estimated revenue in the tens of millions of dollars. And if you're one of those people who love the leftover milk at the bottom of a bowl of cereal, Christina was perhaps the very first person to take that milk and turn it into soft-serve ice cream. Christina Tozzi joined me onstage at the Town Hall in New York City a few weeks ago for a live conversation. And one of the first things I wanted to know was, how do you milk a cornflake?
4:12 Speaker 00 You're very hip on culinary technique. That's exactly how we make cereal milk.
4:16 Guy Raz? You just milked it with little, little teeny fingers.
4:19 Speaker 00 It's like from the farms of Ohio to the streets of New York City.
4:23 Guy Raz? You have to be very, you have to be very deft with your fingers, right? So, so let's start with, with where you grew up, outside of Washington DC. What kind of kid were you? I mean, were you like a super academic, sporty? What do you remember about being a kid?
4:41 Speaker 00 I was a mix of all those things. I was very much an academic because like my parents would be like, tozzies don't get anything but As. And I was active. I, I remember loving running at a young age and I just have always had a lot of energy and just found places to put it. But I was always a curious kid.
5:02 Guy Raz? And you actually grew up speaking Italian, right?
5:06 Speaker 00 Yeah. My dad's side of the family is from northern Italy. He's first generation American and I didn't realize, it didn't even occur to me that that was interesting or strange or different. It kind of just was. But I grew up with like romance languages for sure.
5:22 Guy Raz? And as a kid, I mean, because we'll get to this in a second about what you majored in, which I'll just, you know, I'm just going to tell everybody, you majored in applied mathematics and what was the other thing?
5:31 Speaker 00 The Italian language.
5:33 Guy Raz? Yeah, Italian, right.
5:34 Speaker 00 That was a slam dunk.
5:36 Guy Raz? That totally foreshadows compost cookies.
5:40 Speaker 00 But yeah, the path is so straight and narrow.
5:45 Guy Raz? So when, I mean, so when you were like a teenager or, you know, I mean, were you, was baking even part of your life? Were you?
5:53 Speaker 00 Baking was, was part of my life from a super early age. I grew up in the home kitchen and it wasn't with the nuance of technique or like culinary wisdom. It was just, I was the youngest and that was like kind of where childcare happened. My mom was a working mom, so it would just be like, go hang out with your grandmas, go into the kitchen because they're making dinner. I grew up in the suburbs and like you didn't, food wasn't a thing back then. Like you didn't go out to eat. Like, maybe if I read all my books for school, I was like a booket member and went to Pizza Hut to get like a pan pizza. Or if we were really, really, really good as teenagers, we would go to like Baskin Robbins on Thursday nights. That was like if we were very well behaved.
6:37 Speaker 00 But everything else happened at home. And cooking was, was fine. I was never really that into savory food, based on my diet, that I'm so happy you shared with everyone.
6:48 Guy Raz? You, you were, you were basically, you grew up on Kraft mac and cheese and hot dogs and Doritos, right?
6:53 Speaker 00 Yeah, and lima beans with ranch salad dressing. That's been a, that's been a hidden secret for a while.
6:59 Guy Raz? That was your vegetable, okay.
7:01 Speaker 00 But I, so I like grew up being trained to be super studious and super yielding. And the place that I like resonated with most was when we were making cookies, or baking brownies, or lemon bars, or just like ho-hum, home baked goods. But it was the place where I kind of like broke the rules and acted out. It was like stealing a little bit more cookie dough and my grandma wasn't looking. Or like the little, the little nibbles that I knew I wasn't allowed to have. But that was also what resonated with me most, because we would bake every single day, or every single night. And it was less about having dessert on the table,
7:42 Speaker 00 and more about these baked goods bringing us into the community that we lived in.
7:48 Guy Raz? But as a, as a teenager, and, and when you eventually went to college, like I'm, I'm imagining that, like baking was just something you did. It was just something you enjoyed doing. But it wasn't like, I'm gonna do this, because you went to, you started out at the University of Virginia, studying applied mathematics and Italian, so...
8:06 Speaker 00 I went to engineering school at UVA first, and then I was like, science, what's this about? I like math, and I like to bake, not really seeing baking as science.
8:18 Guy Raz? Did you envision your life as a life of somebody who was going to do something with applied mathematics? Like, like being an accountant, or economist, or something like that?
8:27 Speaker 00 My very practical mother, after like my first year of college, was like, "Great." I got home, you know, like first day of break, and she was like, "Great, like, when are you starting your summer job?" And I was like, "What are you talking about?" And she was like, "Let's go." And I got a job in an actuary office, and I was like, "Oh, I don't know that this resonates with me." And I was raised by these people that were so passionate about what they did for a living, and they always raised us to follow that passion. I think they just would have preferred that it was like as an actuary.
8:59 Guy Raz? Yeah, right.
9:00 Speaker 00 As a mechanical engineer.
9:02 Guy Raz? Yeah. And so, did you, I know that after a year at UVA, you dropped out. You decided to, it wasn't for you, for a variety of reasons. And you, you kind of decided to go to Italy for some time. And, but that, again, that wasn't like, that wasn't like the sort of revelatory, like, epiphany in food, or was it?
9:21 Speaker 00 No, it wasn't. So I figured out how to transfer from UVA to JMU, but instead of going to JMU on campus, how to enroll myself right into the study abroad program in Italy, because the thing that I, that I knew for sure about myself was that I was a wanderlust, and I still am today. And I just started over that, like, timeframe of, of being in my, like, late teens and early twenties, just starting to be like, "Who are you?" And whenever I'd get an answer to one of those things, I'd, I'd start to collect the answers, and I want to be out in the world. I feed off of that. So I went to Italy, not under the guise of food, under the guise of education. But I got so much more out of it.
10:04 Guy Raz? And, and so you finished James Madison, and I think in 2002, you get your degree in applied mathematics and Italian. And what, what was your thought? Like, what did you think you were going to do at that point? Did you have an idea?
10:18 Speaker 00 I was a little short sighted. I basically took as many courses as possible to get out of the formal education process. So I graduated in three years being like, I gotta get out of here. I'm over getting straight A's. And I know I don't actually want to do anything for a living with these things. And so it was kind of on the eve of graduation that I was like, uh-oh, I can't go home. I sped so fast through this formal university education, but I don't want to do these things for a living. And so I just asked myself the simple question of like, alright girlfriend, and like, real talk, what is it that you're passionate about that you want to make into a living?
10:59 Speaker 00 And it was this one thing that I just did every single day habitually without thinking about it, and it was bake cookies.
11:08 Guy Raz? You would bake cookies like even in your dorm room?
11:11 Speaker 00 Yeah. It's very common when you are like super studious, you work really hard, you study all night, and then like your, your way to sort of like shed the weight of expectation stresses to bake. It's an outlet. And for me, it was like a social outlet because I would, I'd bring it. I'd bring it every day to high school. You ask people who went to high school with me, I would show up every single morning with something baked.
11:34 Guy Raz? So when you finish, so when you finish college, you start, the sort of gears in your head start to think, okay, maybe there's something there. And, and you decide, alright, I'll move to New York and, and, and sort of find my way?
11:49 Speaker 00 I knew my answer was bake cookies. And so I took a step back.
11:56 Speaker 00 And I was like, okay, am I gonna do this at home? There's no way I'm gonna do this at home. And I knew I wanted to get out, and I was always drawn to New York City. And so I kind of said like, alright, I've been doing this formal education thing for a few years, so I already feel behind on this like newfound dream. So like, I gotta go to the like most fast-paced, um, most well-known food place, and I gotta figure out how to make cookies a profession. So I enrolled myself in culinary school to become a pastry chef. That's like what you would call a formal cookie maker. And at least in my terms, that was my translation of it. Um, and I moved to New York City, having only been here for a few hours once as a
12:39 Speaker 00 teenager, and just hit the ground running.
12:42 Guy Raz? So how did your parents feel about that? Because you went to the, I think it was a French culinary institute to learn how to be, become a pastry chef. How did your mom and dad feel about that?
12:51 Speaker 00 I didn't give them much time to react because I knew how they would feel about it. And I knew who I was and I knew what made sense to me. And I wasn't asking for permission. So I think I told my mom two days before I got on like the Chinatown bus. And with a suitcase full of like cleaning supplies and a sleeping bag and a change of clothes. And she wasn't happy, but I imagined on some level as a child, they also realized that there was a stubbornness about me. And that I did everything they asked me to do and that it was my life to live.
13:32 Guy Raz? And what did you think about culinary school? I mean, was it everything that you'd hoped was this like transformational, amazing, intense experience?
13:42 Speaker 00 I loved every minute of it. I mean, part of it's kind of goofy because you're wearing a uniform. And your uniform is like a white chef's coat and a kerchief that you have to tie a certain way. And a white paper toque that kind of makes you feel very goofy. The second you like lean over, it falls off your head. And the uniform, I didn't go, I went to public school. Like the thought of wearing a uniform, that someone tells you how to wear. Like the things I wear were always an expression of what I was. So there was part of it that was militaristic and curious to me. And then the other part of it, I realized very quickly that with culinary school, just like any part of my education, you get as much out of it as you put into it. And that's when it really started clicking. I was learning all of this technique.
14:26 Speaker 00 I was eating a lot of chocolate. Making friends and I was...
14:33 Speaker 00 I was on my path. I was going to culinary school by day. I was working at restaurants to pay the rent at night and I was never home because who can really afford any livable space in New York City?
14:44 Guy Raz? What did you do after you graduated? What was your first job?
14:47 Speaker 00 So I got my first job while I was in culinary school. I was a pastry cook at Boullet and I like just wedged my way, my foot in the door when I was still a student because I was like, again, like I'm behind. I was like in my twenties and was like, I gotta play catch-up. So I basically convinced them to hire me as an intern and then convinced them to give me a full-time job the second that I graduated. And I was working like the fine dining four-star hustle, which is basically working six days a week. My schedule was from 11 a.m. until 3 a.m. And on the sixth day, you had to work a double, which meant you had to go in at 7 a.m. to 3 a.m. to get your seventh day off.
15:31 Guy Raz? Wow. And what would you do? Like, what was your job?
15:35 Speaker 00 In a kitchen, you have a prep list. And so you, you look at the prep list and it's a list of things that you need for the day based on the desserts you sold the night before, the number of covers that you were expecting in terms of reservations. Like in the morning, when I worked the double, I would always have to make this white chocolate mousse, pipe it into this beautiful tiny little cup, and then make this green tea gelée. And it was with super expensive green tea and you had to boil it to a certain temperature and it could only sit there for two Mississippi's and then you had to whisk in the agar and still, and if you messed it up, which I messed up plenty of times, you would really get hammered for it. And even now, to this day, the smell of green tea, I will, there will never be
16:19 Speaker 00 anything green tea flavored on the menu at Milk Bar because it's like the most beautiful PTSD, even though I, I so appreciate why other people love it. For me, it's something completely different and personal.
16:34 Guy Raz? So I imagine like, what was it like? Because kitchens can be, like, we've all seen cooking shows and have read stories about kitchens. Like, they can be pretty, you know, nasty places, right? Really kind of brutal places. What was it like there? I mean, you know, it was a hot restaurant, lots of people coming in. Was it, was it, you know, hostile, tense, uncomfortable? Or was it just messy? All those things?
16:58 Speaker 00 Yeah. It's tou- I mean, it was tough. It's tough work. It's a tough pursuit. And somehow, I was totally built for the ride of it. On some level, I think my dad raised me enough as a tomboy to be like, let's go. Like, let's go. We're not like, we're not crying over spilled milk. We're not like, I like, I see, you skin your knees, you're like, you're fine. Let's go, let's go, let's go. And to not think about the barriers that were put in place, to just like, are you here? Did you show up? Do you mean it? Nothing's, that's worth it is ever easy. And I didn't think about anything other than that. I just charged forward.
17:42 Guy Raz? So, do, I mean, I'm just curious, while you were at Boulé, I mean, you are learning how to be a pastry chef, right? I mean, this is sort of like, you are in the trenches. Were you already at that point thinking, yeah, you know, this is, this is the thing I think I want to do. I want to be a pastry chef. I want to be the pastry chef at some famous restaurant. Was that, did that start to become an ambition? Or was it more just, you were enjoying what you're doing and you were doing it?
18:07 Speaker 00 So, my first year was just about getting to a point where I wasn't getting my butt kicked at some, if not every, point of the day. And so for me, it was this pursuit of learning, almost like in the Sisyphean complex of just like, you're just rolling the boulder up the hill and thinking about like, oh my God, okay, tomorrow, how am I going to do it better? How am I going to do it faster, quicker, more technique oriented? And after about a year of it is when I really started to see opportunity, not just meeting the standard, but seeing opportunity.
18:42 Guy Raz? You were there for a couple of years?
18:44 Speaker 00 Yeah.
18:45 Guy Raz? And in 2005, you went to go work for WD-50, it was kind of a legendary molecular gastronomy restaurant in here in New York, famous chef, Wylie Dufresne. But you didn't go there to, to work in the kitchen, right?
18:59 Speaker 00 So I left Boulé because I had learned everything about that technique and that style. And when I was thinking about what I wanted to do next, I was starting to think about who I was in food, not just learning how to perfect someone else's techniques, but who I was through food. And I knew I was all about like the home baked good, but I also knew I was super curious and adventure seeking. And so I did the same thing. I stuck my foot in the door at WD-50 and said, I want to intern for you as a pastry cook until you have a job opening and then I will happily wedge my way in there. And it got to a point at WD-50 that my role was beyond pastry cook.
19:42 Speaker 00 I was helping the chef think about hazard analysis plans with critical control point elements.
19:48 Guy Raz? You listened to this hazard analysis, hazard analysis, critical control point plan. This is basically food safety, right? Because every restaurant, especially in New York, you're going to get hammered if you do some tiny thing wrong.
19:59 Speaker 00 Yeah.
20:00 Guy Raz? So you got sort of brought in to help Wiley like come up with a food safety plan for his kitchen?
20:07 Speaker 00 I'd say, hey chef, like, is there extra credit I can do? Because I was raised to be that person in school. And at first he was like, what are you even doing? What are you talking about not understanding that lens? And he was like, I need help with the health department. I'm trying to figure out what this hazard plan, what is it?
20:25 Guy Raz? Yeah.
20:26 Speaker 00 They just are telling me I need it. And he was a super smart, super savvy guy, but there were a lot of walls up that he had to figure out how to break down.
20:32 Guy Raz? A restaurant had to have hazard analysis, critical control point plan?
20:37 Speaker 00 If using a certain technique, we're going like super dorky food.
20:41 Guy Raz? Yeah, what's the technique?
20:43 Speaker 00 The cooking technique is called sous vide. So under pressure, creating an anaerobic environment by sucking air out of a bag.
20:50 Guy Raz? And then gently boiling it. And so to use that technique, you needed this like health safety plan in your restaurant?
20:58 Speaker 00 You needed this like 60-page analysis of everything from you bring the watermelon in and who's receiving it and who's taking the temperature and is there a potential Bacteria contamination step. And if so, is there a kill step all the way through? It landing perfectly placed on your beautiful plate.
21:20 Guy Raz? All right, so you helped write this thing. In the meantime, are you doing any cooking at the restaurant?
21:24 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah. I'm working as one of two pastry cooks in the restaurant.
21:28 Guy Raz? And that was like a super hot restaurant, right? At the time, like it was getting press.
21:32 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah. It was it. It was. It was probably the last great restaurant in New York City. That.
21:40 Guy Raz? That.
21:41 Speaker 00 That, that, oh, my gosh, no.
21:45 Speaker 00 That existed before like eater and food blogging and and access to these great restaurants existed online. It was. It was the restaurant that only existed in this beautiful way in the underbelly of the New York food scene by word of mouth. It was in the Lower East Side. No one even went to the Lower East Side back then.
22:07 Guy Raz? And and were you getting a chance to experiment at that point? Or were you still sort of doing what you were told to do?
22:13 Speaker 00 So I found a way to both experiment through the ideas of my pastry chef at the restaurant and learn so much about technique and flavor manipulation and how to bring the flavor of cornbread into an ice cream base. And then I started realizing, because I didn't really have a kitchen in New York City in my own home, that if I just showed up to work early, I could just like make my homespun dessert before my shift started, work through the crazy technique driven demands of the shift and then serve my like brownies. Chocolate chip cookies for family meal.
22:54 Speaker 00 And that was my first like step into serving my baked goods in an environment of discerning culinary mind.
23:06 Guy Raz? So when the staff, like the restaurant staff usually eats like four o'clock, right? Before the restaurant opens at 5:30, whatever, the family meal, you would just bring desserts and?
23:16 Speaker 00 I would just bring up whatever I had showed up early to bake.
23:19 Guy Raz? And that really is the beginning of what would become your most famous dessert, right?
23:24 Speaker 00 That's right.
23:25 Guy Raz? How did that happen? What's the story?
23:28 Speaker 00 It was a Sunday. And the fact that it was a sunny is an important part of it. It was a Sunday. I was showing up to work early as I always did. And I was going to make something for family meal. That was my routine. And I was looking in our fridges and I was like, "Oh, we don't really have anything extra for me to work with." And it was a Sunday. And in restaurants, you don't get deliveries of supplies, of your raw food goods on Sundays. And I was like, "What am I gonna make? What am I gonna make? What am I gonna make?" And my favorite cookbook at the time is still today is The Joy of Cooking. It's like equal parts dorky and historical. And there's like not really pictures. So you have to really be into the words.
24:11 Speaker 00 And was deep into the pie section. And I fell in love with the story of chess pie. And chess pie is this pie down south that you make when you don't have enough apples to make apple pie or pecans to make pecan pie. You make just pie with like the southern twang said over and over again, chess pie. And I loved the idea of like, it's kind of pie with the filling and none of the other probably better for you stuff. And I love the idea of putting just whatever you have together, the basic pantry items, butter, sugar, vanilla extract, eggs, and whisking it together and putting it in a pie shell and baking it. And I was never one for really following the recipes of another cookbook
24:56 Speaker 00 because I was always tinkering. And so I kind of, I purposefully didn't measure anything, just sort of tasted the batter, put it in the shell, baked it, went off to do my normal pastry cook duties. Never really set. Uh, and the meal that you make for a family meal is an important one because it shows your peers, what you're made of, what you think tastes good. What you cook for them is almost maybe more important than what you're cooking for your guests. Not really, but in theory it is. And so I was embarrassed that day because I thought, "This is the first time I'm gonna put up a family meal dessert that I'm not proud of." It didn't even set. That's everything about that is bad technique. Threw it in the fridge, didn't think about it. Threw it up for family meal at 4:00 PM
25:39 Speaker 00 and kind of went and hid in a corner and ate my meal quickly. And before I knew it, there was just like loud oohs and ahs and strange things. And I was like, "Am I gonna get in a fight in the kitchen? What's going on?" And these guys that I worked with were just like... Just buzzing all over the place like, "What is this? What'd you make?" And I'm like, thinking that I'm hiding in the shadow around this dessert. Instead, they're freaking out about this like gooey, buttery, delicious mess of a pie. That they named Crack Pie. And we have since renamed for other reasons. But it was, it was this thing that lived in the underbelly of New York City dining before
26:24 Speaker 00 I even opened Milk Bar.
26:25 Guy Raz? All right, you're still at WD-50, you're working as a pastry chef. But I guess around 2005 or 2006, Wiley gets a call from David Chang, the famous, David Chang, founder of Momofuku. He's having some problems with the health department. Cause he wants to do, right? He's trying to do sous vide as well.
26:46 Speaker 00 These guys.
26:47 Guy Raz? And they keep shutting him down, right?
26:48 Speaker 00 Yes. These guys. Well, 2006 also, Noodle Bar, David Chang, like, y'all probably didn't even know who that was. Noodle Bar had just opened. Noodle Bar had probably been open six, seven, eight months at the time. But Dave called Wiley and was like, "Dude, I'm getting in trouble for the same thing that you just got in trouble for."
27:09 Guy Raz? He was being shut down by the health department because he wasn't able to show a plan with his...
27:14 Speaker 00 I mean, what entrepreneurial cook? You don't, they don't teach you this stuff at culinary school. It's like, never seen before technique. And therefore, the idea of writing this crazy hazard analysis plan. A great chef is not typically a bookworm on that level. And so Wiley knew like clockwork that I'd be like, "Chef, it's my weekend. What, what do you got for me?" And he'd be like, "I need you to go, I need you to go uptown," which was the East Village. "I need you to go uptown and help my friend, Dave." And I was like, "Cool, great."
27:50 Guy Raz? So when you got, when you met him, did he say, "Hey, can you help me write this hazard critical analysis control point plan, Rivers called?"
27:57 Speaker 00 He was like, "I did a bad thing and I need your help." Cause if you know Dave, you know like, and most of us. That are in it is personal to us. So when someone comes in and like threatens to shut down your business, it's everything we've got that's in it. And when someone threatens the one thing that you've been working so hard for, it's like, uh-uh. And he kind of lost it on them. And it was my job to clean it up.
28:25 Guy Raz? So you started building a plan for him?
28:27 Speaker 00 Yep.
28:28 Guy Raz? And what, at some point, he said, hey, will you come work with me?
28:32 Speaker 00 Yeah, I was in this interesting transition period at WD-50 because I knew it was time for me to move on. I didn't see myself as the pastry chef there. Fine dining, it felt different than who I was as I was figuring out my voice in food. And on top of that, there was this magnetism to Dave and to what he was doing and to how we got along. It was like we spoke the same language without ever having to say a word.
29:01 Guy Raz? And what were you doing there? Because you were not cooking, right?
29:04 Speaker 00 No, he was like, do you want a job? And I was like, well, what would the job be? And he was like, I don't know. You figure it out. And there was something about the like, I don't know, this or that, really like whatever is needed and also we'll figure it out. Like the openness of it was like, perfect. Where do I sign up?
29:24 Guy Raz? At that time, I don't think Momofuku had a pastry chef. They didn't even have a dessert menu.
29:29 Speaker 00 Dude, it was the wild, wild west. I don't know that there was even a girl anywhere in, I don't even know that there was a girl in the kitchen. They were a bunch of dudes in a tiny little space, like going for it, blood, sweat and tears. The thought of dessert, right at that point, it was dainty. It was time consuming. It takes up space from an economic standpoint. Like it was kind of in their mind, just a waste.
29:56 Guy Raz? So, I mean, did you do the same thing at Momofuku? Like when they had family meal, would you bring desserts and stuff like that too?
30:03 Speaker 00 Yeah.
30:04 Guy Raz? Crack pie and all these things?
30:05 Speaker 00 Yeah. I think the first time, because Dave was like, what is this? What is this crack pie that Wiley keeps telling me about? I was like, I don't know, it's just pie. It's pie. And he was like, I want to taste it. And I was like, Okay, and I made it. I think I made him a miso crack pie once. I would just make whatever.
30:20 Guy Raz? Yeah.
30:21 Speaker 00 And bring it in. I mean, everyone, who doesn't like baked goods?
30:22 Guy Raz? But this was really like-
30:23 Speaker 00 Everyone loves the person that brings baked goods in for work.
30:25 Guy Raz? Yeah, of course.
30:26 Speaker 00 Everyone loves that.
30:27 Guy Raz? But I mean, it sounds like this was really an outlet for your creativity, right?
30:30 Speaker 00 Yes.
30:30 Guy Raz? Like, it really was just something you loved doing. And because it was at this time where you kind of came up with the idea of playing around with cereal milk and making panna cotta. So had, because cereal milk, of course, would loom large in your life eventually.
30:44 Speaker 00 Yeah.
30:44 Guy Raz? Um, how did you figure out how to extract milk? From, from cereal?
30:50 Speaker 00 Well, guy. Um, I was starting to think through desserts differently and starting to really understand and flex these muscles of like rule breaking in the baking and in the dessert space. For me, the fine dining part of desserts that I have always struggled to resonate with were the ones that feel like they're so far over your head or they're so luxurious that there's no like, connection to what your taste buds know to be like, sweet and guilty and indulgent and naughty and all the reasons why we love to eat dessert. And so I was thinking through like, basic desserts.
31:34 Speaker 00 Panna cotta is a basic dessert. And I was like, oh, what a missed opportunity, like buttermilk or lemon, those are great ideas. But like, wouldn't it be cool if it was flavored something different? And I just, I started to like, use the weird isms that I'd solve a math problem with, where it's like, what's the lowest common denominator? Milk. What can I flavor this milk with to speak to people? And I would just, I, my favorite thing to do as a kid, and still my favorite thing to do today, is just walk the aisles of the grocery store. In New York City terms, we don't really have grocery stores as much as we have bodegas. And I would just walk the aisles and be like, could you be a flavor of milk? Could you be a flavor of milk? I got to the cereal aisle and was like, I mean, this is always a flavor of milk.
32:20 Speaker 00 I was like, it's a good idea or a bad idea, but-
32:22 Guy Raz? Right, because I mean, who doesn't remember that as a kid, right? Like, um, Cap'n Crunch, Crunch Berries, right? Amazing.
32:29 Speaker 00 Well, everyone has their favorite flavor, yeah.
32:32 Guy Raz? Cinnamon Toast Crunch?
32:33 Speaker 00 Come on. Like, this was where, when I made cereal milk for the first time- I did the same things I did with the pie where I was like, this is either gonna mm, a little ashamed, not really certain, because when you're trying to find your true voice, you're not even sure that it sounds right when it comes out. But it was seeing the look on people's face, it was seeing the look on Dave's face, it was seeing the look on my coworker's face.
32:59 Guy Raz? You made, you basically took milk and you infused the milk with like cornflakes, right? You just poured cornflakes in there and just let it sit there and then?
33:07 Speaker 00 I mean, it's more than that, but that's like the basic of it.
33:10 Guy Raz? But basically. Strained it, got, and made panna cotta out of that, and then served it and you said, did you tell them what it was?
33:19 Speaker 00 No, no.
33:20 Guy Raz? You just said, hey, I've made this.
33:21 Speaker 00 I just gave it to them. I said, taste this, tell me what you think. And I kind of scuttered away because...
33:25 Guy Raz? And it was cornflake milk?
33:26 Speaker 00 Yeah. Made a little toast on the cornflakes, a little seasoning, and they came running after me and were like, what is this? What is this? It was like they knew what it was and they can't put their finger on it.
33:39 Guy Raz? It was like malted a little bit, yeah.
33:40 Speaker 00 And it was seeing the reaction of like, you get me, you got me, what is this? I know what it is, I can't put my finger on it, my eyes are popping out of my head, and I just want to give you a big hug that I was like, this is it.
33:59 Guy Raz? Wow. Like, this is special, right? Because cereal, I mean, nobody was taking milk and infusing it with cereal. I mean, it's sort of a little weird.
34:10 Speaker 00 I mean, it sounds silly to say now, right?
34:11 Guy Raz? It sounds...
34:12 Speaker 00 Because now you see it everywhere.
34:13 Guy Raz? It sounds like a no-brainer now, but, right?
34:15 Speaker 00 Or you can say that everyone was doing it. We were just doing it over like in our holy pajamas. Yeah, exactly.
34:21 Guy Raz? Delicious.
34:22 Speaker 00 Yeah. No one was setting it into a panna cotta, swirling it into a soft serve, or thinking about it through that lens.
34:28 Guy Raz? Yeah. So at some point, David asked you, hey, can you, I want you to make dessert for the restaurant. What, he just decided, let's try this, let's make dessert?
34:39 Speaker 00 I think he saw in me someone that always needed to be in over my head to be moving. And I think at the same time, he knew he was building this amazing magical thing in Momofuku and that in order to continue to be taken seriously, he was gonna have to take his restaurant empire seriously. And like it or not, that includes desserts.
35:06 Guy Raz? So what did you make?
35:08 Speaker 00 Strawberry shortcake.
35:10 Speaker 00 But it wasn't, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't, it was like the best dorky approach to strawberry shortcake.
35:16 Guy Raz? What was it?
35:17 Speaker 00 It was this super high-fat butter shortcake that had a little bit of corn powder in it for flavor and buttermilk. And I would roll it in confectioner's sugar before baking it, because that was something my grandma would do with her cookies when I was a kid. And so it gave this incredible like salty but sweet and sharp and buttery and crumbly and tender. And I'd take these tiny little gems of tri-star strawberries and I'd macerate them, but in a certain ratio of sugar. And I would, just a little bit of sherry and balsamic vinegar to make the strawberries taste like something you had never had. And I'd put sour cream in the whipped cream because it needed a little bit of an edge. And I had all these things that like, it couldn't just be strawberry shortcake.
35:58 Guy Raz? I want that now. Don't you guys want that? Yeah.
36:06 Guy Raz? Sounds so good.
36:07 Speaker 00 I mean, I couldn't just make a strawberry shortcake, but I had to make something. And it was that, it was being pushed to make something, to say, who are you on a plate? You're not standing behind somebody else. You are the person making the dessert. That brought out a different side of me.
36:26 Guy Raz? So I guess around 2008, there was this opportunity, right? David had, he had a restaurant, another restaurant, and the neighboring laundromat or whatever, they move out.
36:37 Speaker 00 Yeah.
36:38 Guy Raz? And what, he comes to you and says, hey, Christina, why don't you open like a dessert place next door? Was that, I mean, is that how it happened?
36:48 Speaker 00 I was making- Making desserts for a few of the Momofuku restaurants at that point. But the only place that I could make the desserts was in one of the restaurant kitchens. And the only, like, that, guess what? That happens at 3 o'clock in the morning when everyone else goes home.
37:00 Guy Raz? Because there's no space.
37:02 Speaker 00 Right. And so there would be a point where he was like, we gotta like, we gotta find, we're gonna find you space. We're gonna find you space. And he knew that I loved to bake. He knew, I mean, I was, I would still bring in baked goods. So he's like, I have an idea. We gotta take over this laundromat space. Um, I think you should take it. I think you should take it. We don't want somebody else to move into the block. I think you should take it. You'll still make desserts for us, but you'll, then you'll just like do your own thing on this menu.
37:28 Guy Raz? So it would be a bakery that had like a door, storefront, but you would also make desserts for his restaurants? And it would be like, kind of part of Momofuku, but also sort of separate?
37:39 Speaker 00 Yeah. I was like, great, let's do it.
37:40 Guy Raz? Wow. Like that?
37:42 Speaker 00 Yeah.
37:42 Guy Raz? And so he was gonna basically kind of sponsor this thing and you were gonna go in and kind of run it?
37:48 Speaker 00 He was like, great, uh, go figure out how to sign the lease and like, let's go. When's it gonna open?
37:53 Guy Raz? Wow. And, and at that point, I'm just curious, because you were so, I mean, you know, you were so experienced, right? But still really young. I think you're 27. Um, did you go through the process of like, I don't know, creating a business and putting together a business plan? And like, getting lawyers and all these things? No?
38:14 Speaker 00 Guy, no cook would ever do that. No, I was young and, uh, I didn't know enough to know any better. I just said yes and jumped.
38:26 Guy Raz? It was a cool opportunity.
38:28 Speaker 00 I just said, yeah. I was like, great, that sounds great. That sounds like something exactly like what I would like to do. And I'll go do it. I'll just go do it.
38:37 Guy Raz? When we come back in just a moment, how Christina prepared for Milk Bar's opening day? And what happened after Anderson Cooper ate a piece of crack pie? Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.
38:57 Guy Raz? Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2008, and Christina has just signed a lease to take over the space next to Momofuku's second restaurant and turn it into a bakery, into Milk Bar. And when it came to the look and feel of the bakery, it was a big departure from fine dining.
39:15 Speaker 00 The original inspiration for Milk Bar was it's going to be like a modern day take on Dairy Queen, Slashback and Robbins, but I'm also going to serve a bunch of baked goods because that's just what I love to do.
39:26 Guy Raz? I'm curious about the aesthetic of it because I've read that it's described as part punky Brewster, part Lisa Frank, which I love. I think it's awesome.
39:35 Speaker 00 Part tomboy chic.
39:37 Guy Raz? What an amazing-- I mean, did you think, did you have a kind of a vision in your mind of what you wanted it to look like and feel like, or did that just kind of happen organically?
39:48 Speaker 00 Aesthetically, it didn't even occur to me to think of what it would look like, but I knew what it would feel like. I knew that I wanted to open this quirky, American style bakery that served cookies and cakes and pies and soft serve, and that I wanted it to hold space in people's lives. I was like, the world doesn't need more bakeries. We don't need more chocolate chip cookies. We need more of the theory of that, but in a way that inspires and is sticky and is a place that anyone can come and people can get like, just feel a little seen, get a little wacky. And so, everything was just
40:30 Speaker 00 like brass tacks, stainless steel, you know, the cheapest furniture we could find, scraping paint off the side of an exposed brick wall. And then all of the other aesthetic from that, like our neon milk sign was literally a, the storefront is a quarter of the way into the block and people can't find it because I refuse to pay for like permitting and drawings to put a sign outside. And I was like, but if I hang a really big neon sign in this creepy hallway-- I bet, I bet that would work. And I was like, okay, well, what does it say? Milk, I couldn't fit all of Milk Bar without it becoming awkward. So I typed Milk on my laptop and highlighted it and was like,
41:15 Speaker 00 you know, if it's modern day Dairy Queen, it should have like a little bit of that nostalgic brush grit medium.
41:22 Guy Raz? So you just use an off the shelf, off the shelf font, brush grit medium.
41:26 Speaker 00 And then I was like, what color is it gonna be? And it's like, okay, well, taxi cabs in New York are yellow. The stoplights are red and green. The little crosswalk guy is, you know, like flashes white. And it's like, pink, that'll stand out. That'll get someone's attention. They'll at least see the light. And they did.
41:46 Guy Raz? And, and what, um, and what were you, when, when you opened up, what were your first products? Had they all been tested out at, at Momofuku?
41:55 Speaker 00 Yeah, I would still just make family meal the way that I always had. So I would, some of the things that are still on the menu at Milk Bar today, like the cornflake chocolate chip marshmallow cookie, was somebody burnt the cornflake crunch that was used for another dessert. And I was like, well, we're not gonna throw this away. We were like raised by parents that like waste not, want not mentality. So I was like, hide it in a cookie, put some chocolate chips in it. And we were using marshmallows for some other like R and D moment. And so I was like, just use the rest of the marshmallows. It was kind of just like a hodgepodge cookie. And we made it and put it out and it would, people freaked out. And we were like, okay, that, well, that's a go on the menu.
42:31 Guy Raz? By the way, I read that, I read that, I don't know if this is apocryphal, that you, for breakfast every day, you eat a cornflake marshmallow chocolate chip cookie.
42:36 Speaker 00 I used to eat two every morning. And the bod, 11 years later, like gets very angry if I start with two warm cookies without like caffeine and something else that's like slightly more responsible. Though my diet today is proven otherwise.
42:52 Guy Raz? All right, so when, so, so the store was gonna have cornflake marshmallow chocolate chip cookies. It was gonna have crack pie, birthday cake.
43:01 Speaker 00 Yeah.
43:01 Guy Raz? I mean, did you have staff at the beginning or was it just you?
43:06 Speaker 00 I think there were four of us at the beginning. And they were the, they, they remain. Four of the most incredible loyal human beings. Lord knows why they followed me down into this crazy path. But we would show up every day. I mean, we'd literally be like, "You go home and sleep two hours. And then when you come back, I'm gonna go home and take a shower. And then you'll come back."
43:28 Guy Raz? Because it was a hamster wheel. Like, the day you opened, there was a line around the block to get in. What was that? How did people know about it?
43:37 Speaker 00 We had the trust of people that knew what the Momofuku name meant. And it was like, one, it was November 15th, 2008. Recession, people were scared. But you know how New Yorkers are. Like, people still wanted to get out and be a part of a scene. And everyone loves a good line? I don't know. It didn't make any sense to me. I was like, "How do these people even know we're opening a bakery today? Do they even know what they're waiting in line for?" And...
44:09 Speaker 00 And they came. And it was like, I'm so grateful that I didn't have time to worry about, "Are people gonna get this?"
44:19 Guy Raz? Yeah.
44:20 Speaker 00 "Are they gonna get why we would put pretzels and potato chips and ground coffee and all these other crazy salty-sweet things into a cookie and call it a compost cookie? Are they gonna be like, 'Girl, what are you doing?'"
44:30 Guy Raz? Yeah.
44:30 Speaker 00 And what it proved out was like, there's like an incredible number of people that are like, I think of them as like sweet-toothed soulmates, that like showed up. And they showed up for like a milkshake on a Monday morning at 10:00 a.m. And they showed up at 2:00 a.m. because they were like, "I'm trying to while out, but I got $2. And so can I get a cookie? Can I get a cookie?"
44:59 Guy Raz? I'm trying to figure out, how did you like manage the business and also bake all this stuff? Because you, these were your recipes. They had to be to your standards. Like, you were in the kitchen. You were scooping out cookie dough. You were mixing stuff. But you were also like, running a business that was increasing in popularity. Like, did you never sleep?
45:22 Speaker 00 That's correct. That's correct. I still, to this day, am like always stressed out that I'm not gonna get sleep.
45:32 Speaker 00 At night, but it never occurred to me it was a one day at a time thing. It was the same thing of like, cool, today I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna roll that boulder up a freaking mountain and I'm gonna do whatever it takes to make it happen because it's what I believe in. It's because it's what these four people believe in. It's because people that are showing up at 9 a.m. and are like, I am here for that milkshake.
45:53 Guy Raz? Yeah.
45:54 Speaker 00 That we're gonna show up and we're gonna figure out how to make it happen.
45:57 Guy Raz? How was the business funded? I mean, I know, of course, David had, you know, came in and helped you open it up. You were putting in sweat equity all your time. I have to assume you were not-
46:07 Speaker 00 It was a lot of sweat.
46:08 Guy Raz? Independently wealthy at 27 years old.
46:11 Speaker 00 Yeah, definitely.
46:12 Guy Raz? So like, was it, I mean, did he put in money and then you had to depend on cash flow?
46:17 Speaker 00 He loaned me money through our, through the holdco of Momofuku and it was, I was very well versed at operating on a shoestring budget because that's how we built the Momofuku empire and so it was, it was a loan that we agreed that I'd pay back and I just figured out how to make it work. I mean, I was raised in this mentality of like, you only need what you need and most of the time you have everything that you need and you can make so much more work with so little. And it was always also really important to me that it was a patient pursuit and that it was a real business and that it was a business that was successful both emotionally and financially.
47:01 Guy Raz? But the profit margin on baked goods is really slim and your cookies are not that expensive. I mean, at the time, they were $2, $2.25.
47:11 Speaker 00 They were $1.85 when we first opened.
47:14 Guy Raz? So how were you able to have a sustainable business even with all the hype and all the attention? I mean, that, that's a very narrow margin.
47:23 Speaker 00 It has always been important to me.
47:28 Speaker 00 Like, you can't hold space in people's lives, you can't be a bakery for the people if people can't be a part of the bakery. And so it was always important to me. Our cookie over 11 years hasn't even gone up a whole dollar in price. We, we push back on that sort of stuff. Listen, you have to sell a lot of cookies to pay the rent.
47:49 Guy Raz? Yeah.
47:49 Speaker 00 And it's, and so on some level, it's a volume business. But I've always thought about it in terms of like, well, the more cookies we make, the more people were feeding cookies. Like, that's what we're showing up for. That's what we're here for. I am not changing our fancy, very expensive butter that the team that does the financial analysis of food causes like, like, please, please, a cheaper butter. And it's like, no, this is what, this is what it's built on. It's a reality and it's something that we believe to be really important. My access to food, my inspiration to food was from the grocery store. And I got excited about food because it was something that we could afford. And so it's always been important to me that that, I'm always building something that
48:33 Speaker 00 could inspire, like my 10-year-old self. And I can't price my 10-year-old self out of it.
48:38 Guy Raz? I mean, I'm curious though, because obviously there was a lot of hype. I think 2009, Anderson Cooper on national television on Regis and Kelly said, hey, I have had this amazing crack pie in New York's incredible. Like, was that a turning point? Did that result in just an explosion of interest?
48:53 Speaker 00 Yes. I, I didn't know it was going on TV and I certainly, it's like, he was like, hey, girl, heads up.
49:01 Speaker 00 I got you tomorrow morning. I got you at, at 8:15 in the morning. But I got home a few hours before and at that time, my BlackBerry was the customer service, like dial-up hotline. And I just remember my BlackBerry kept buzzing and buzzing and buzzing and buzzing. And I was like, what is going, like, did the bakery catch fire? Is my family okay? What could this possibly be? And I had all these voicemails and I have, I, my favorite voicemail was from this woman in Kansas City who I think maybe was someone's grandma. And she was just like, well, I heard, you know, Anderson Cooper talk about this crack pie and I just, I'm never gonna make it to New York. So like, would you mind shipping me one? And it was like...
49:45 Speaker 00 Are you gonna tell her, are you gonna call her back and tell her no? Because I was not gonna call her back and tell her no. And I was like, I know how to shit pie. My whole upbringing was about taking half the baked goods we'd make and putting them into care packages and sending them in the mail. There's nothing better than receiving baked goods in the mail. So I was like, I know how to do that. And I went to like all the local drugstores and bought those like break and freeze ice packs. And then went to all of like the UPS and USPS stores and was like, I'll take all the boxes, I'll take all the boxes. And just showed up at the bakery and was like, here we go. We got a new day. It's a bigger boulder today than it was yesterday. And we now have an online business where you can email us. And, but like...
50:35 Speaker 00 But that is like, when opportunity knocks, what are you gonna say? Like, mm, not today?
50:41 Guy Raz? Yeah, right.
50:42 Speaker 00 Or like, when it's time to rise to the occasion, you rise.
50:48 Guy Raz? What was, I mean, I can't imagine how insane it was. Like baking, all, keeping up with demand, running a business. Like probably a lot of media requests were coming in. What was keeping you up at night? Like what was causing stress for you? Was any, were you stressed out?
51:06 Speaker 00 It's so interesting. I'm confident I was stressed out, but I wouldn't be like, I'm so stressed out, I can't function. I'd just be like, okay, what's next? What am I thinking about? What's slowing us down? There was a point where I was worried about, I'd be worried about like, do we have enough cookie scoops? And is the team feeling inspired to scoop as fast as I know we can scoop?
51:30 Speaker 00 Those are realities. And it became more operational than anything else. Financially, I was very, um...
51:41 Speaker 00 I was very like self mandated on knowing what numbers we needed to hit to be in a good place, to be in a medium place. And I knew every year I'd or every quarter I would line up the like, what do we need to be able to do it better and more thoughtfully now that we know a little bit more? And what is our bottom line resource and how do we invest it back into the business?
52:02 Guy Raz? What was the relationship between you and David like? I mean, he is a brilliant chef, obviously an incredible reputation, but also has a reputation for having clashed with lots of people. It's not, it's not, you know, abnormal for super talented people to clash with other people. It's not a ding on him. But, I mean, was he like coming in and trying to give you tips and advice and I don't know, like, were you sort of pushing back and saying, get out of my way? Or did he just leave you alone?
52:28 Speaker 00 All of those things. All of those things, depending on the day. I think if you work in a kitchen, that like healthy tension, that like you're one moment, you're on my team, the next moment, you're in my way, the next minute, we just don't see eye to eye about how we're going to get to the finish line or whatever it is. Like, at this point, he remains forever brother and one of my most thoughtful soundboards for how I am thinking about building Milk Bar with the team. But, I mean, we would, early days, we'd argue, he'd be like, there can't be a line. No one wants to wait and let, like, we would argue about how quick or how slow the line would take and why. And at the same time,
53:11 Speaker 00 when you are as stubborn as I can be, you need someone that's also willing to dig into you because there, you can't see, no one can see everything. And so, our relationship has been hilarious and human throughout. I mean, we've known each other now for almost 20 years.
53:32 Speaker 00 But would I have like taken the step or the leap or I don't know. I mean, I have no clue and I'm so grateful for having him in my life to kind of kick me out of the house.
53:44 Guy Raz? Did you, I mean, I think within about two years, you started to expand. You went to three stores. You had 60 employees. I'm just curious about the economics of this. I mean, were you even paying yourself in the first year or so?
53:59 Speaker 00 Very little.
54:00 Guy Raz? Yeah.
54:01 Speaker 00 But like also, what am I, I'm here to live to build this bakery. I'm not like, I'm not taking a day off. What am I doing?
54:07 Guy Raz? Yeah.
54:07 Speaker 00 Like the, my going out is like going to a local bodega to get like a dirty sandwich late at night. That is joy and splurge for me.
54:15 Guy Raz? Yeah.
54:16 Speaker 00 And it was whatever it took to make the business work. After the first, I was like, I'm going to write a cookbook because one, I know that that part of the business will help. I can put that back into the business and plus it helps us reach more people and give recipes and this and the other. The reality of opening another store, because at the time I had this sweet little care package business, thanks to Anderson Cooper and this one store. But that business was so big that we were doing crazy things like sticking shipping boxes basically all over our only store. Like there was a point where if you went in, you could only take five steps forward and three steps to the left and then three backward, you know, five backward steps out.
54:59 Speaker 00 And I thought to myself, like, you got to build a bigger ship.
55:02 Guy Raz? Yeah.
55:03 Speaker 00 And so I knew I needed to think about a larger production kitchen. I founded Amazing Space in Williamsburg, which is where we produce everything for our New York City stores.
55:13 Guy Raz? Yeah.
55:14 Speaker 00 And I was like, great, this is like wonderful and takes so much weight off of that tension. And then all of a sudden it was like, oh, that's just two rents to pay instead of one. And though the production part of it is easy, I'm now under utilizing this commissary space and I need to open another few stores to support it.
55:32 Guy Raz? I'm curious, because there's a point, right, in every business when an entrepreneur has to sort of decide, is this a lifestyle business?
55:38 Speaker 00 Yeah.
55:39 Guy Raz? And this could have been a great lifestyle business. You could have had three shops. You could have baked on, you know, two or three days a week and done payroll and done accounting and run a business and made a good living and had a nice life. Or do you scale it up? Do you make it something much, much bigger? When, I mean, you must have had that internal dialogue, right? When, when did that happen?
56:00 Speaker 00 I think the first time that it started, that I started really taking that conversation seriously was two years ago when I decided to raise money to grow the business for the first time, to actually start taking this business, which was eight years in at the time, seriously. And, yeah, we could start charging $5 for a cookie.
56:21 Guy Raz? Right.
56:22 Speaker 00 But that, that wasn't right to us. That's not who we are and that's not what we believe in. And I had a real reckoning with myself of this is a real business and it's time to start thinking, you're at that crossroads. And what is it and what do you want to do with it?
56:38 Guy Raz? You know, I was, I was at the San Francisco airport recently and it was just like a deli or bar there and they had cookies with potato chips and marshmallows and things that were so unusual when you introduced them in 2008, right? Cracked pie cereal milk flavored things. All of those things are out there. I think Ben and Jerry's at one point had a cereal milk, I don't know if they still have cereal milk ice cream. Do they still have it? They don't. Okay. I got you. Sore point, sorry. Sorry about that. Whew.
57:12 Guy Raz? How do you, how do you feel about when you see like, you know, the mainstreaming of potato chips and sweet corn and cereal milk flavors in desserts all over the place?
57:28 Speaker 00 It's kind of supernatural. It's like both endearing and wonderful because I think it points to people's enthusiasm to like ignite their curiosity and to like get a little wacky and wild and to think about breaking the rules in these tiny little ways. And then on another level, like it turbocharges us. It makes us say like, We're coming to the aisles of the grocery store. Like, that's our space. One, that's where my imagination started. It's where I still go. And that's, that's where we're going. That's what we're doing.
58:07 Guy Raz? And you have stuff in...
58:08 Speaker 00 Yeah, and we're coming at, like, we're coming in strong in the future, Guy. Like, we're, we're here. Where you, you just wait. It's, it's both wanting to celebrate people's, like, curiosity in food and then to also be like, we gotta keep going. We're gonna keep going and we're gonna keep pushing.
58:28 Guy Raz? But you bootstrapped this thing for like eight years and you were growing and growing and growing. So, did you feel like you had to take outside money to really scale the business? That you couldn't do it without outside money?
58:41 Speaker 00 No, it wasn't that at all. I mean, I, we had, I had proven for eight years that I didn't need the money. But I also knew that at this inflection point, it would almost be stubborn to not consider it, to not take myself seriously, to not take this thing that we had built that is like based on humanity and patience and real things and things that we do with our hands and not with our thumbs, and to not put more of that in the world. Like, I have been super thoughtful around how to raise money to fuel the business while also making sure
59:22 Speaker 00 that the, the values and the principles of what we stand for exist and that loss of control isn't possible.
59:31 Guy Raz? I think you guys have 16 shops now, right? You've got, the mail order business accounts for like a third of your business? Something like that?
59:39 Speaker 00 Yep.
59:40 Guy Raz? Um, almost 400 employees?
59:42 Speaker 00 Yeah, 440 today. I took the count for you. Just in case you ask.
59:49 Guy Raz? I think I know the answer to this question because you have, I mean, very obviously a really strong work ethic. I mean, does any part of you ever just wanna, I don't know, just kinda sell it and, I mean, get off the hamster wheel and just kinda enjoy the fruits of your hard work over the last decade?
1:00:07 Speaker 00 I don't see it as a hamster wheel. Like, I'm so fueled by it still where I'm like, I could go into like my Gmail and click on my drafts and my list of ideas that have to go on the menu, whether it's in grocery stores, whatever it is, is so long. I just, until that list gets shorter, I, and I can't see it getting shorter anytime soon. I, like, what am I gonna do in, what would I do in a day? I'd probably just wake up and start baking. So why would I, like, why, you know, like, why would I give that away? I got a lot of, I got a lot of ovens to do the baking in these days.
1:00:45 Guy Raz? I know that you didn't get into, you didn't, you didn't open Milk Bar with David for, to make a lot of money. It was a cool opportunity, it was a cool thing to do. You, you didn't sort of look out in the distance and say, "I'm gonna be really rich," but you've made money. How has that changed your life?
1:01:03 Speaker 00 Not much. I would say like the thing that has changed about my life is I'm not like sleeping and eating and baking in the same cubby, which is nice.
1:01:17 Speaker 00 I mean, but then also you miss the romance of it because it was so lovely when that was it.
1:01:23 Speaker 00 I spend, I would say for me, my biggest, how it's changed my life is I put so much of myself into this profession. Before Milk Bar even, coming to New York City, I said goodbye to my family and knew that they wouldn't understand immediately. And now, and I put everything into it, I never took a day off, and now I can like arguably take a day off and get on a plane, or a train, or in a car, or on a bus, and go and see my people, and go and live life in the The ways that we like create those sticky moments at Milk Bar for you. And that for me is like the greatest indulgence, like nothing else changes.
1:02:07 Speaker 00 Like, I'm still trying to go through a store shopping. I'm still trying to make friendship bracelets. Like, it's cool because I can take like an embroidery craft class and not be like, oh, my gosh, am I going to eat, am I going to be eating like Kraft mac and cheese for the next six days to support it? And that part of it's easy, and the rest of it, I just don't really care about.
1:02:25 Guy Raz? You've heard me ask this question before, and I'm going to ask you the same question. How much of all this that's happened to you is because of your intelligence, incredible hard work? And how much do you think it's just because you got lucky?
1:02:36 Speaker 00 I think it is more opportunity than it was luck. I think it was, I'm never like the one that I don't win scratch-off Lotto tickets. That is a splurge. That's one I left out. I don't consider myself to really have great luck. I'm never the one that like wins the contest, but I show up and I mean it. And I'm just a really big believer in good people that show up and mean it, winning in the end. And I think that's a mixture of like focus and smarts and hard work. And PS, like, I had no street smarts when I moved to New York City. All of these skills you can sharpen as long as you remove the barriers to convincing yourself you can sharpen your skills. And it's opportunity.
1:03:19 Speaker 00 And like, when opportunity knocks, when that BlackBerry starts buzzing, you better get your hiney out of bed and get to it.
1:03:27 Guy Raz? Christina Tozzi, founder of Milk Bar. Christina. Thank you. I spoke with Christina Tozzi at the town hall in New York City. By the way, the tallest Milk Bar cake ever made was a seven-layer wedding cake, mint cookies and cream. And the occasion, Christina's own wedding in 2016. And as is often the case with wedding cake, the guests didn't finish all of it that night. So the next morning, they just had it for breakfast.
1:04:01 Guy Raz? Hey, thanks so much for listening to this live episode of How I Built This. Our show was produced this week by Rachel Faulkner and Candace Lim with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Our live events team includes Jessica Goldstein, Ali Prescott, Alan Jorgensen, and Andy Huether. Thanks also to Julia Carney, Sanaz Meshkhanpour, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Sequoia Carrillo. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.
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