Live Episode! Milk Bar: Christina Tosi

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 okay? What could this possibly be? And I had all these voicemails and I have a vo 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 crackpot and I just, I'm never gonna make it to New York, so like, would you mind shipping me one? And it was It's like Are you gonna tell her, are you gonna call her back and tell her no? Cause I was not gonna call her back and tell her no. And we now have an online business where you can email us.

Yeah. Like When opportunity knocks, what are you gonna say? Not today. When it's time to rise to the occasion, you rise.

From NPR, it's how I built this. show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. Build. I'm Guy Raz and on the show today

How Christina Toze's passion for pie and cookies led her to open Milk Bar, a multi million dollar sweet shop. That's reinventing nostalgic. American desserts. 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. Or burger or ice cream is hard. 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 Tosey. 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.

The exact amount of chocolate. Or cream or vanilla. the perfect crumb on the cake. These are the products that Christina Tosi 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.

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 Tosi joined me on stage 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? You're very hip on culinary technique. That's exactly how we make cereal milk. You just milked it with little teeny fingers. It's like from the farms of Ohio. Incredible. The streets of New York City. You have to be very You have to be very deft with your fingers, right? So um so let's start with with where you grew up outside of Washington, DC. Um

What kinda kid were you? I mean, were you like uh super academic, um sporty? What what do you remember about being a kid? I was a mix of all those things. I was very much an academic because like my parents would be like Tosies don't get anything but A's 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. And you actually grew up Speaking Italian, right? Yeah. My dad's side of the family is from Northern Italy. He's first generation American. I didn't realize it didn't even occur to me that that was interesting or strange or different. It kinda just was. But I grew up with like romance languages for sure. Uh because we'll get to this in a second about what you majored in, which I I'll just I you know what I'm just gonna tell everybody. You majored in applied mathematics. And uh what was the other thing. Right. That was a slam dunk.

That too. totally foreshadows compost cookies. But Yeah, the path is so straight and narrow. 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 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 kinda where child care happened. My mom was a working mom, so it would just be like go hang out with your grandmas, go into the kitchen'cause 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 book it member and went to Pizza Hut to get like a pan pizza. Or if we were really, really, really good. Uh as teenagers we would go to like Baskin Robins on Thursday nights. That was like if we were very well behaved, 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. You were you were basically you grew up on craft mac and cheese and hot dogs and Doritos, right? Yeah, and Lima beans with ranch salad dressing. That's been a that's been a hidden secret for a while. Um 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 Hohum b home baked goods, but it was The place where I kind of like broke the rules and acted out 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 and more about These baked goods bringing us

into the community that we lived in. Trevor Burrus 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 the you start out at the University of Virginia. Step. I went to engineering school at UVA first and then I was like, science, what's this about? I like math and I like debate, not really seeing the connection as a did you envision your life as a life of somebody who was going to do something with uh applied mathematics? Like like be an accountant or an economist or something like that?

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. Yeah. As a mechanical engineer. Yeah. And so did you I know that after a year at U VA you dropped out. You decided to it wasn't for you for for a variety of reasons. And you You kind of decide to go to Italy for some time and but that again, that wasn't like But wasn't like this sort of revelatory like epiphany in food or or was it? 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 ha I ha I was a wanderlist and I still am today. And I just started over that like time frame 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. Um but I got so much more out of it. And so you finished James Madison and I think in 2002 you get your degree in applied mathematics in 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? So 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, all right, girlfriend, then like real talk, what is it that you're passionate about that you want to make into a living?

And it was This one thing that I just did every single day habitually without thinking about it, and it was bake cookies. You would pay cookies like Even in your dorm room. 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 and stress is 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. So when you finish so when you finish college, you start the so the gears in your head start to think, Okay, maybe there's something there And and you decide all right, I'll move to New York and And f in sort of Find my way?

I knew my answer was bake cookies, and so I took a step back. 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 kinda said like Alright, uh 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 teenager and just hit the ground running. So how did your parents feel about that? Because you went to the fr I think that it was a French culinary institute to learn how to be a become a pastry chef. How did your

Mom and Dad feel about that? 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. Ага он лекцинатаун бас. 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 imagine on some level as a child they also realized that there was a stubbornness about me. Uh And that

I did everything they asked me to do and then it was my life to live. And what did you think about? About Culinary school. I mean, did it was it everything that you'd hope was this like transformational, amazing, intense experience? 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 t a white paper toque that make 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 I my 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's really started clicking. I was learning all of this technique. I was eating a lot of chocolate. making friends and I was

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. What what what did you do after you graduated? What was your first job? So I got my first job while while I was in culinary school. I was a pastry cook at Boulay. 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'm 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 um eleven AM until three AM and on the sixth day you had to work a double, which meant you had to go in at seven AM to three A. Wow. And what would you do like

List and so You you look at the prep list, it's in 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. Um I 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 Tijolet. 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 Mississippis and then you had to whisk in the agar and still and if you messed it up, which I messed up plenty of times. Mm.

You would really get hammered for it and s even now to this day the smell of green tea. I will there will never be 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. So I imagine like what was like'cause kitchens can be like we've all seen cooking shows and have read stories about kitchens like they they can be pretty, you know, nasty places, right? Really kind of brutal places. What was it like there? I mean th 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. Yeah. It's ta 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 got 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. So d I mean, I'm just curious, while you were at Boole, I mean you are learning how to be

a pastry chef, right? I mean this is sort of like you are in the trenches. Um Were you already at that point thinking Yeah, you know, this is this is the thing I think I wanna do. I wanna be a pastry chef. I wanna 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 were doing and you were doing it. So

My first year was just about getting to a point where I wasn't getting my butt kicked. Yeah. Some, if not every point of the day. And so for me, it was this pursuit of learning. Almost like in the Sisyphian 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 gonna do it better? How am I gonna 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.

Um you were there for a couple years. Yeah and in two thousand five you went to go work for W D fifty, was kind of a legendary molecular gastronomy restaurant in here in New York. Um famous chef Wiley Dufrein. Um but you didn't go there. to to work in the kitchen, right? So

I left Bule 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 to 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 W D fifty 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 W D Fifty that my role was beyond pastry cook, I was helping the chef. Think about hazard analysis.

Hazard analysis critical control point plan. This is basically food safety, right? Because every restaurant, especially in New York, you're gonna get hammered if you do Some tiny thing wrong. So you got sort of brought into help.

Wiley like come up with a food safety plan for his kitchen? 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 has up plan what is it? 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 and restaurant had to have a hazard analysis critical control point plan. using a certain technique. We're going like super directly. S uh the cooking technique is called sous vide, so under pressure creating an anaerobic environment by sucking air out of a bag. And then pus gently boiling it. And so and so to do to use that technique you needed this

H like Health safety plan in your restaurant? You needed this like sixty 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 is there a potential. um bacteria contamination step and if so is there a kill step all the way through Yeah. Landing.

Perfectly placed on your beautiful plate. Alright, so you help write this thing. In the meantime, are you doing any cooking at the restaurant? Oh yeah. I'm working as one of two pastry cooks. In the restaurant. And that was like a super hot restaurant, right? It was getting press. Yeah.

It was probably the last great restaurant in New York City. That that oh my gosh no 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. And and were you getting a chance to experiment um at that point, or were you still sort of doing what you were told to do? 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 home spun dessert. before my shift started work through the crazy technique driven demands of the shift and then serve my like Yeah.

Brownies, chocolate chip cookies, um for family meal. And that was my first like step into Serving my baked goods in an environment Uh Discerning Culinary minds. So when the staff like the restaurant staff usually eats like four o'clock, right? Before the restaurant opens at five thirty, whatever the family meal, you would just bring

I would just bring up whatever I had showed up early to bake. And that really is the beginning of what would become That's right. What How did that happen? What what's the story?

It was a Sunday. And I said the pat the 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 uh 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 uh of supplies of your of your raw food goods on Sundays. And It's like what am I gonna make, what am I gonna make, what am I gonna make? And my favorite cookbook at the time and still today is The Joy of Cooking. Um It's like equal parts, dorky and historical. And there's like not really pictures, so you have to really be into the words.

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 um 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 love the idea of like is 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, um 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 because I was always tinkering And so I kinda I 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 said. Uh

And The meal that you make for 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 I was emb 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 just 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 p.m. and kind of went and hid in a corner and ate my m my meal quickly and before I knew it there was just like

loud ooos and ahs and strange things and I was like, just I'm gonna get a fight in the kitchen, what's going on? And these guys that I worked with were just like Just buzzin' all over the place, like what is this would you make? And I'm like thinking that I'm hiding in the shadow around this dessert and instead they're freaking out about this like gooey, buttery, delicious mess of a pie. Um that they named crackpie, and we have since renamed for other reasons.

Uh But It was it was this thing that lived in the underbelly of New York City dining before I even opened milk bar. All right, s you're still at W D fifty, you're working as a pastry chef. But I I guess around two thousand five or two thousand six, um

Wiley gets a call. from David Cheng, the famous Sh David Cheng, founder of Momafuku. He's having some problems with the health department. Because he wants to do right? He's trying to do Sous Vide as well. He's got the shutting him down, right? These guys. Well, 2006 also, Noodlebar, David Cheng, like y'all probably didn't even know who that was.

Noodlebar had just opened. Noodlebar 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 call it. He was being shut down by the health department because he wasn't Able to show a plan with his I mean what entrepreneurial cook you don't they don't teach you the 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 up to Help my friends. Dave. And I was like,

Cool, great. So when you got when you met him, did he say, Hey, can you help me write this hazard critical analysis control point plan, whatever it's called? He was like, I did a bad thing and I need your help. Because 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 kinda lost it on them. So it's my job to clean it up. So you started building a plan for him? Yep. And what at some point he said, Hey, will you come Work with me. Yeah, I was in this interesting transition period at W D fifty 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 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. And what were you doing there? Because you were not cooking, right? 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? At that time, I don't think Momafuku had a pastry chef, right? They didn't even have a dessert menu. 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 sh it was kind of in their mind just a waste. 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? Yeah. Crack pie and all these things? Yeah.

I think I I think the first time because Dave was like what is this what is this crack pie that like Wiley keeps telling me about? I was like Time. And he was like, I wanna taste it and I was like okay. And I made it, I think I made him a miso crack pie once. I'd just make whatever. Yeah. And bring it in. I mean everyone who doesn't like baked goods. Everyone loves the person that brings bake goods in for work. Yeah, of course. Everyone loves that. But I mean it it sounds like this was really an outlet for your creativity, right? Like it really was just something you loved doing. And'cause it was at this time where you kind of came up with the idea of

playing around with cereal milk and making panicata. So 'C cereal milk, of course, would loom large in your life eventually. Um how did you figure out how to extract milk from From cereal. 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. Formi

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. 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 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 bodega's, 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 serial aisle and was like I mean this is always a flavor of I was like, it's a good idea or a bad idea, but Right,'cause I mean, who doesn't remember that as a kid, right? Like

Um, cap and crunch, crunch berries, right? Amazing. Well, everything like their favorite flavor. Yeah. Cinnamon toast crunch? 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 either gonna mm a little ashamed, not really certain,'cause when you're trying to find your true voice. You not even s That it sounds right when it comes out.

But it was seeing the look on people's faces. It was seeing the look on Dave's face. It was seeing the look on my co workers' face. You made you basically took milk and you infused the milk with uh with like cornflakes, right? You just poured cornflakes in there and just let it sit there and then it was more than that, but that's like the basic of it. Strained it, cut the and made panicata out of that. And then sherved it and you said Did you tell them what it was? No. You just said it to them. I said, Tas tell me what you think and I kind of scuttered away because And it was cornflake milk? Yeah. made a little toast on the cornflakes, 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 put their finger on it.

And it was seeing their 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? Wow. Like this is special.

Right, Cassirum I mean, nobody was Taking milk and infusing it with Serial. I mean it's sort of weird. I mean it sounds silly to say now, right? It sounds now. You see it everywhere. It sounds like a no brainer now, but right? Or you can say that everyone was doing it. We were just doing it over like in our holy pajamas. Yeah, exactly. Delicious. Yeah. No one was setting it into a panicata, swirling it into a soft syrup, or thinking about it. Through that lens.

I want you to make dessert for the restaurant. What he just decided let's try this. Let's make dessert. I think h 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. So what did you make? Strawberry shortcake.

But it wasn't it wasn't you know, it wasn't it was like the best Dorky approach to strawberry shorty. 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 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 TriStar strawberries. And I'ma 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.

Don't you guys want that? Yeah. Yeah. Sounds so good. I mean I couldn't just make a strawberry shortcut, 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.

So I guess around two thousand eight there was this opportunity, right? David had the he had a restaurant, another restaurant, and the neighboring laundromatter, whatever, they move out. Yeah. And What he comes to you and says, Hey, Christina Why don't you open like a desert place?

Next door? Was that I mean how it happened? I was 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 That guess what? That happens at three o'clock in the morning when everyone else does. Right. And so there would be a point where he was like

We gotta like Find 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 that 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. Uh I think you should take it. I think you should take it. We don't want somebody else to move in to 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. 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. Yeah. I was like, Great, let's do it. Wow. Like that. Yeah. And so he was gonna basically kind of sponsor this thing and you were gonna go in and kinda run it.

He was like, Great. Uh Go figure out how to sign the lease and like Let's go. When's gonna open it? Wow.

And And At that point I'm just curious because you were so I mean you you know, you were so experienced, right, but still really young. I think you're twenty-seven. Um, did you go through the process of like I don't know, s creating a business and putting together a business plan and like

Getting lawyers and all these things. No. No cook would ever do that. No, I was young and Uh I didn't know enough to know any better.

It was a cool opportunity. 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. 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. N PR.

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 baker, into milk bar. And when it came to the look and feel of the bakery, It was a big departure from fine dining. The original like inspiration for a milk bar was it's gonna be like a modern day take on Dairy Queen, uh slash basket robins, but I'm also gonna serve a bunch of baked goods because that's just what I love to do. I'm curious about the aesthetic of it because I've I've read that I've read it described as part Punky Brewster, part Lisa Frank. Oh which I love. I think it's awesome. Like part Tomboy chic of the I mean did you think did you have an a a kind of a vision in your mind of

What you wanted it to look like and feel like, um, or did that just kinda happen organically? 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 like inspires and is sticky and is a place that anyone can come and people can get like. Just a s feel a little seen, get a little wacky. Um and so

Everything was just like brass tack, stainless steel. Um, you know the cheapest furniture we could find, scrapin 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

I couldn't fit all of milk bar without it. Yeah. So I typed milk on my laptop and highlighted it and was like, you know, if it's modern day dairy queen, it should have like a little bit of that nostalgic And then just use an off the shelf, off the shelf font. Rush to PDM. And then I was like, what color is it gonna be? And it's like okay, well taxicabs in New York are yellow, the stoplights are red and green.

The little crosswales, 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. And And and what um and and what were you when when you opened up, what were your first products? Had they all been tested out at at at Momafuku? 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 what 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 kinda 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 going on the main. I read that I don't know if this is apocryphal that you for breakfast every day you eat a cornflake marshmallow chocolate chip. I used to eat two every morning And the bot eleven 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. Cornflake, marshmallow, chocolate chip cookies.

Yeah. Did you have staff at the beginning or was it just you? I think there were four of us. 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. Because it was a hamster with the day you opened there was a line around the block to get in it. We had the trust of people that knew what the Momofuku name meant. And it was like one, it was two November 15th, 2008. recession people were scared but you know how New Yorkers are like people still wanted to get out and and 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 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? Yeah. 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 called a compost cookie? Are they gonna be like, girl, what are you doing? Yeah. And it and 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 a.m. And they showed up at 2 a.m. because they were like I'm trying to while out, but I got Two dollars. And so can I get a cookie? Can I get a cookie? I

I I I'm trying to figure out how 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're also like Running a business that was

Increasing in popularity. Like did you never sleep? That's correct. That's correct. I still to this day I'm like always stressed out that I'm not gonna get Sleep.

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 h 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 nine a.m. and are like I am here for that milkshake.

That We're gonna show up and we're gonna figure out how to make it happen. 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 independently wealthy at twenty seven years old. So like was it I mean Did he put in money and then you had to depend on cash flow?

He loaned me money. through our through the hold co of Momo Fuku 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. But the profit margin on Baked goods is really slim, and your cookies are not that expensive. They were a dollar eighty five when we first opened. So how were you able to have a sustainable business even with all the hype and all the attention? Mean that That's a very narrow margin. It has always been

Mm. Like You can't hold space in people's lives. You can't be a baker for the people if People

Can't be a part of the baker. And so it al it was always important to me. Our cookie over eleven years hasn't even gone up a whole dollar in price. We We push back on that sort of stuff. You have to sell a lot of cookies to pay the rent, 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 costs is 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 believed 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 could inspire like my ten year old self. And I can't price my ten year old self out of it. I mean I'm curious though, because obviously there was a lot of hype. I think in 2009, Anderson Cooper on National Television on Regis and and Kelly said, Hey, I ha have had this amazing crack pie in New York's incredible like

Was that a turning point? Did that Yeah. I I didn't know he was going on TV and I certainly it's not like he was like, Hey girl, heads up It's

I got you tomorrow morning. I got you at at 815 in the morning. But I got known a few hours before and Uh 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 on? Like, did the bakery catch fire? Is my family okay? What could this possibly be? And I had all these voicemails, and I have a vo I my favorite voicemail was from this woman in Kansas City who I think maybe was someone's grandma, and she was just like like well I heard you know Anderson Cooper talk about this crackpot and I just I'm never gonna make it to New York. So like I'm would you mind shipping me one? And it was like

Are you gonna tell her, are you gonna call her back and tell her no? Cause I was not gonna call her back and tell her no. And I was like, I know how to ship pie. I feel like my whole upbringing was about taking half the bake 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 the all the local drug stores 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 Bella But That is like when opportunity knocks, what are you gonna say? Like

Not today. Yeah, right. When it's time to rise to the occasion, you rise. What 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 w were you stressed out? It's so interesting. I'm 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'd 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.

Those are realities. Um And it became more operational than anything else. Financially I was very um

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 I 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. Wha 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, you know, abnormal for super talented people to to clash with other people. It's not a ding on him, but Um I mean was he like coming in and trying to give you tips and advice and and I don't know, like were you sort of pushing back and saying, Get out of my way or w w or or did he just leave you alone? 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 gonna 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 А те сам тайм 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 it 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 twenty years. Yeah. Um

But would I have like taken the step or the leap or ha n I don't know. I mean, I have no clue and I'm so grateful for having A pin in my life to kinda kick me out of the house. Did you I mean. W I think within about two years you started to expand. You went to three stores.

You had sixty employees Um I'm just curious about the economics of this. I mean Were you even paying yourself in the first year or so? Very little. Yeah. 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? Yeah. Like the 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.

Um And it was whatever it took to make the business work. After the first I was like, I'm gonna 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. Um 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. Базнес вас со

big that we were doing crazy things like sticking shop um 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. And I thought to myself, like you got to build a bigger ship. And so I knew I needed to think about uh a larger production kitchen I found an amazing space in Williamsburg, which is where we produce everything for our New York City stores. 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. 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? And and this could have been a great lifestyle business. You could have had three s three shops. You could 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. W when

I mean you must have had that internal Dialogue, right? When when did that happen? 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 would was eight years in at the time, seriously. And Yeah, we could start charging five dollars for a cookie, 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. You know, I was um I was at the San Francisco airport um recently and Um it was just like a a deli or bar there and they had cookies with um potato chips and and marshmallows and

Things that were so unusual when you introduced them in two thousand eight, right? Um crack 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 the cereal milk ice cream. Do they still have it? They don't. Okay. I gotcha. Sore point, sorry. Um

Sorry about that. Ooh. Um How do you Um how do you feel about uh when you see like

You know, the mainstreaming of potato chips and and sweet corn and cereal milk flavors and and desserts all over the place. Um It's kinda 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. Um

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 and you have stuff in yeah, and we're coming at like we're coming in strong in the future, guy. Like we're We're here. It's it's both wanting to celebrate people's like curiosity and food and th and then to also be like, we gotta keep going. We're gonna keep going and we're gonna keep pushing.

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? 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 that The the values and the principles of what we stand for exist, and that loss of control. Is it possible? I think you guys have sixteen shops now, right? You've got uh the the mail order business accounts for like a third of your business, something like that. Yeah. Um mo almost four hundred employees. Yeah.

Four hundred and forty. What'd it do? I took the count for you. Um just in case you ask. I I think I know the answer to this question because you have I mean very obviously a really strong work ethic Um I mean does any part of you ever just wanna

I don't know, just kinda sell it and I mean get up Anster Wheel and Just kinda enjoy the fruits of your hard work over the last decade. 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 My Gmail and click on my drafts and my list of ideas that have to go on the menu. Ведет с grocery stores, whatever it is. is so long. I just until that list gets shorter. I and I can't see it getting shorter any time soon.

I Like what am I gonna do in a what would I do in a day? I'd probably just wake up and start baking. So why would I like why Why would I give that away? I got a lot of I got a lot of ovens to do the baking in these days. I know that you didn't get into You didn't you didn't open Milk Bar with David um for to make a lot of money. It was a cool opportunity. It was a cool thing to do. You didn't sort of look out in the distance and say, I'm gonna be really rich. you've made money, um, how has that changed your life?

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. Um I mean, but then also you missed the romance of it,'cause it was so lovely when that was it. Um

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 ways that we like. create those sticky moments at Milk Bar for you. Th and that for me is like the greatest indulgence. Like nothing else changes. Like I'm still trying to go through a store shopping. I'm still trying to make friendship bracelets. Like it's cool'cause I can take like an embroidery craft class and not be like, Oh my gosh, am I gonna eat am I gonna be eating like craft 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.

Um you've heard me ask this question before and I'm gonna ask you the same question. How much of all this that ha 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? I think it it was 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 when I left out. Um I don't consider myself to really have great luck. I'm never the one that like wins the contest, but Um, I show up and I mean it, and I'm just a really big believer in good people that show up and mean it.

win in the end, and I think that's a mixture of Um 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. Um And it's opportunity and sh and like when opportunity knocks when that blackberry starts buzzing.

You better get your hiny out of bed. and get to it. Christina Tose, founder of Milk Bar. Christina Yeah.

I spoke with Christina Tosey 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. 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 Candice Lim with music composed by Ramteen Erablui. Our live events team includes Jessica Goldstein, Ali Prescott, Alan Jorgensen, and Andy Heuther. Thanks also to Julia Carney, Sunized Mechanics, Neva Grant. And Jeff Rogers.

Our intern is Sequoia Carillo. Guy Raz. And you've been listening.

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