Milk Bar’s Founder on Building the Most Beloved Dessert Brand in the World
Today we are thrilled to welcome the latest — and sweetest — addition to the Female Founders Fund portfolio, Milk Bar — the award winning bakery and dessert brand with a cult-like following.
Founded by James Beard Award-winning pastry chef Christina Tosi in 2008, Milk Bar has grown from its first iconic East Village storefront to 12 bakery locations, online with nationwide shipping, on the shelves of 9,000 grocery stores, and was named one of the most innovative companies in the world by Fast Company in 2022.
While Christina is new to the FFF portfolio, she is no stranger to the FFF community having attended our CEO Summit, founder dinners, and other events in years past. This new round of funding marks a unique investment for Female Founders Fund, as our first growth check in a later-stage company.
Please help us welcome Christina to the FFF family, and read more about her vision for the future of Milk Bar in our interview below.
In 2008 you opened Milk Bar’s iconic first shop in the East Village, and have since expanded to 12 retail locations, available online nationwide, and in 9000 grocery stores. How have you been able to keep the magic and charm of the original bakery while expanding the brand? How do you think about keeping the brand’s mission at the forefront as you scale?
Remaining as both the founder and CEO has been an important guiding light, while allowing myself to be human and sharing the vision and guideposts of Milk Bar with my team over the last 15 years. Milk Bar was my idea, but any business is at its best when it’s a reflection of the people in it, building it, nurturing it. When goodness exists inside, when true innovation, stickiness, curiosity and growth exist inside, they all have a way of expressing themselves externally too. We treat ourselves and one another care and compassion and a zest, passion and respect for what we do and I believe that is the secret to our success in many emotionally understandable ways from the outside looking in. We talk about setting goals, moving goal posts, we share good ideas and bad ideas. I ultimately help us decide and adopt the north star based on what FEELS, gutturally true to me and my original idea, and create a business case around it. But the guide posts and goal posts and possibilities we share in together at Milk Bar.
Milk Bar has become much more than a place to buy cookies — it has created a strong brand that consumers are passionate about. How have you thought about building community, particularly during Milk Bar’s early days? How and why is community critical to your growth strategy?
In 2008, I didn’t even realize I was creating community, or rather, “community” was not a word recognized or respected in business. It was just part of my DNA of how I knew to best build and be a part of a team. How I knew best to build a bakery — you’re coming into our house and we’re going to do everything we can to make you feel seen and cared for and welcome and a part of our quirky little universe.
Being a baker is an intrinsically altruist pursuit, you create something for the pleasure of someone else, and there is a natural community in that. That’s not something we take lightly. From the beginning we’ve done everything in our ability and plenty folks wouldn’t recommend from a “best business practices” standpoint because we believed it was important to our WHY. We will give our recipes to anyone who asks for them. We keep prices reasonable to make sure there is something for everyone. We listen when they share. That sense of give and take, of closeness, has allowed us to better develop our menu, to show up with vulnerability — trusting our community would get it, get us. It’s a revolving door, we’re making promises to our customers, our community and they are making promises to us. That’s what a healthy, meaningful relationship IS. It’s not a transactional relationship, it can’t be. We love to win on a P&L, but that’s not what makes us feel whole at night. So we spend the time, and effort, give the heart in investing in the intangibles. That’s what makes community.
Best part about community is that because it’s NOT about the transaction, when you build it and nurture it properly, it is always bigger than your “customer base”, it’s always growing and folks are a part of it because they want to be a part of it. Ideally they decide then they want to support by buying a cookie, or trying a pint of ice cream in their weekly grocery shop. So you always have something bigger than you to show up for, reach out to, help out, etc. It creates a meaningful ecosystem in and out of the boardroom.
How have your customer’s insights driven Milk Bar’s product roadmap and brand values?
The older and wiser we grow as a company, the more obsessed we have become with data. We want to know it all. Where do our people live? Who do they buy cakes for, themselves or someone else? The clearer we get on who these people are, the better we get and meeting them in these special moments in their lives. We live to show up for people. Just because we sold out of something doesn’t mean everyone LOVED it- what could we do better, what are we crushing, what do folks want to see more of. What haven’t we tried that folks are craving in dessert land. Having specific and macro industry insights to refer to help guide our decisions thoughtfully and impactfully. We have a place to go and listen, though we always remind ourselves that being creators, innovators and risk takers are an important part of the insights balancing act, too!
You are the host of the culinary competition “Bake Squad,” which is currently airing its second season on Netflix, and have also judged on the show “Masterchef”. How have you been intentional about building your public brand, and how has this impacted Milk Bar’s growth?
I remember in my early kitchen days how much comfort and understanding my parents felt when they saw the chef I worked for in a magazine, or on a TV show. It showed them this wild dream I was chasing down, the reason I was missing birthdays and holidays, maybe wasn’t so crazy. Or at the very least gave them a bridge to understand why I chose unchartered territories. I want my team to feel that, to feel a sense of pride in where they work, why they work, why it matters. I realized, to boot, not a lot of female leaders have the opportunity to show themselves to the masses in these ways. And if young people can’t see it, how do they understand what’s possible, what to believe in. Being a role model is important, beyond the walls of Milk Bar. I didn’t become a chef or a business owner to be in the spotlight, yet life can surprise you.
It’s also been incredibly meaningful to the business, we have fans show up to our bakeries from Kansas, Nebraska, The Philippines because they saw me on a Netflix show and wanted to be a part of what we are doing. While I may a pretty big introvert, I’ve also learned to get over myself, get into hair and make up and get comfortable being uncomfortable under shiny spotlights, it fills my cup to meet these people and know we reached them miles and miles and miles from where our brick and mortar locations are.
Your memoir, “Dessert Can Save the World,” came out last year. What does this title mean to you? Any major realizations you had while reflecting on your founding journey?
This book is a rally call to remember that JOY MATTERS and we already have everything we need within us to generate it for ourselves and for others. Ultimately, it is a call to action to seize the small moments that can make a big difference. We ALL need daily small miracles, now more than ever. Dessert can’t fix everything, obvi, but that’s not the point. Giving and receiving the spirit of dessert can put us back on the path to joy, and then we can soldier on doing the work to set the world right.
I see this work through the lens of dessert, because I’m a pastry chef, I know its superpowers, I know the way it connects us heart-to-heart like nothing else- to ourselves, to one another. I know WHAT it can do. But there are so many other things that can do this, too. It’s all about ditching the recipe, finding your personal version of dessert, and not waiting for the perfect moment to bake the cake — metaphorical or otherwise.
Milk Bar has an almost all-women management team. Was this intentional?
I was raised by fierce matriarchs, who knew the power of a hard day’s work, who didn’t take “no” for an answer, and wouldn’t dare show up empty handed. They were, ARE superheroes to me. I wasn’t setting out to build a mostly female-identifying team, to be honest I was heads down running the business. And when I finally looked up I was surrounded by the most incredible group of salt-of-the-Earth, clever, talented, heartfelt women. While the men on the team have been instrumental, it doesn’t surprise me that the bulk of our team from executive leadership to bakery managers are women.
We’ve been so lucky to have you as part of the Female Founders Fund community for years, having attended events like our CEO Summit, gifting product for founder dinners, and more. What’s stood out to you about FFF’s community over the years?
What a real, honest community it is. Every step of the way it has lived up to his mission, its promise. It is supportive, insightful, it goes above and beyond supporting and showing up for women in business or with business aspirations. I have found it to be the ULTIMATE connective tissue, mighty and far reaching beyond what I’ve ever seen a collective, a community, a fund aspire to or achieve.
What factors do you look for in investors? Why did you decide to accept capital from FFF?
You can’t do a good deal with bad people, and you can’t do a bad deal with good people. I often use that as my compass. But the finances are only part of it — when we take investors we are taking partners in our business. Teammates. I look for investors who have gone where I am looking to go, who have unlocked the things I want for the business. I believe in asking for advice, for feedback, in learning from those who have walked the path. When we’ve grown financially at Milk Bar, I wanted to make sure our decision, our financial partners reflect who we are, the makeup of our team and values. Female founded, female led, female financed, as much as possible. Building from the inside out.
What is next for you and for Milk Bar with this round of financing? As you look to the future, what channels are you leaning into?
So much of our business has changed over the years, and especially over the last 3 years because so much of us and the world we live in has changed. We’re focused on simplifying our businesses, doing bigger, better, fewer things tactically and using this round of financing to thoughtfully lean into the HECK yes’ like new grocery innovation (for my what has always been my dream of dreams) in order to show up for anyone anywhere on their most simple shopping adventures- to help folks challenge the way they think about themselves, the world, to remind folks there’s more beyond a chocolate chip cookie — more creativity, innovation and life beyond our nostalgic flavor signposts. That evolution, pushing boundaries, rule breaking for good is what we need more of in the world, whether that comes through a pint of ice cream or a cookie or elsewhere.
What is your long-term vision for Milk Bar?
To be the most beloved dessert brand in the world.