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When Minuto Bauli, which owns 12 pastry/coffee shops in Italy and one in Vienna looked to expand, it decided to do so in New York City. Why decide on NYC which is over 4,000 miles from Italy and across the Atlantic Ocean?
The ownership, explains Jacopo Butti, Minuto Bauli's general manager for North America, who hails from Verona, Italy but has lived in NYC for 20 years, believes that the NYC market "is expanding and growing more than Europe. Therefore, it's better to invest in a market with greater potential than the Italian market, which is more stagnant."
Only One Pastry Served
Its signature dish, Minuto Bauli, is also its only pastry served. Butti describes it as a "sweet bread, which comes from a simple recipe consisting of butter, flour, eggs and mother yeast." And each minuto bauli can be filled with 6 different fillings and 8 toppings.
Its 6 fillings include hazelnut spread, pastry cream, pistachio spread, dark chocolate, apricot jam and mixed berry jam. Its 3 most popular toppings are chopped hazelnuts, chopped pistachios and white chocolate pearls, which together constitute about 60% of its business.
"In a world where personalization is increasingly important, we want to offer the chance to create new and unique combinations, every time," Butti points out.
Butti noted that its goal was to "create spaces where people can enjoy an authentic Italian experience, one freshly baked treat a time." And even its name, which includes minuto, meaning just a minute, suggests "take a brief moment to slow down and reset," he explains.
In opening in NYC, it's aiming to reach an American audience while maintaining its authentic Italian ingredients and recipes, thereby bringing a piece of Italian pastry to a large, multicultural metropolis.
Minuto Bauli is 100% owned by its original owner, the Bauli family that opened its first retail shop in 2017, without private equity funding or outside investors. Its pastries are still based on founder Ruggero Bauli's original recipe and still relies on its Futura mother yeast.
Dough Is Prepared in Italy
Butti explains that its dough is actually prepared in Verona, Italy by one of its master bakers in the original laboratory where the pastry shop began. Each dough selection is weighed and hand-portioned and then frozen so it can be shipped overseas. Once in NYC, he says the dough "undergoes a slow, 12-hour rising process anchored in Italian tradition and completed with care on-site."
Serves Only One Signature Dessert
Asked what other kind of pastries it serves, Butto replies "We only serve Minuto Bauli, along with our signature coffee drinks and a full-espresso bar" that specializes in Lavazza coffee beans also shipped in from Italy." So unlike almost every other pastry shop in NYC, which has a variety of items, its specialty item, minuto bauli, is its signature and only offering.
It also doesn't serve sandwiches of any kind either, but it offers specialty coffees such as the Calimero, which it calls the Pastry Cream Dream, which consists of coffee, whipped cream and pastry cream topped with Catalan crunchy grains, Butti asserts.
It opened on Broadway and 16 Street, across from Union Square Park and around the corner from a popular Barnes & Nobel bookstore. Butti says it selected this site because it is a place "where many different audiences intersect-students, professionals, locals and tourists." It's located near an Ole & Steen's pastry shop, the Danish shop which now has 5 NYC locations.
He refers to this Union Square area as "the new hot zone where more and more retail food and beverage brands are moving, and we wanted to be ahead of the trend."
Asked if it's made any alterations to its pastries to appeal to an American audience, Butti says it hasn't but "we're here to listen and learn from our customers. We will, periodically, update offering based on local tastes."
It also has rather lengthy hours of mostly 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. (weekend hours may vary). "We're like a gelato shop. We get customers in a rush, and in the summer, people stay out late after dinner," he explains.
First NYC and Then More American Locations
On Yelp, customer reaction tended to be positive. Miranda from Brooklyn and her friend were attracted to its shop's purple and neon lights, which they had already seen on social media. They shared the minuto bauli with pistachio topping and thought it was "rich yet light. My friends thought the cream was a little too sweet but for me it was just right."
And Tsvikia from Manhattan found the minute bauli "decadent, ridiculously tasty, and the buns had just the right fluffiness, an excellent dessert option or just on the run treat."
Moving to NYC is part of a 5-year expansion plan, Butti notes, that starts with NYC and then expects to grow along the East Coast. They expect to expand in various Manhattan neighborhoods such as Midtown, Upper West Side, Upper East Side, West Village, SoHo and also Williamsburg, Brooklyn though he admitted rents there are rising.
He calls the keys to its success as: 1) Product innovation, such as creating a chocolate-based dough or cinnamon dough, 2) Selecting the right store format; smaller stores should work, 3) Getting the brand name out there, which should happen as they expand.
"We see Minuto Bauli becoming part of the rhythm of American cities," he says.