Milk Bar Launches New Line, Asks: ‘What Happened to Dessert?’
While keto and low-sugar products may dominate the food industry discussion right now, Chef Christina Tosi wants to answer the question of ‘what happened to dessert?’ The James Beard award-winning Chef and bakery owner announced today the launch of a new line of Truffle Crumb Cakes in Whole Foods Markets nationwide.
The cakes, which retail for $2.99 per two pack, will debut with three flavors: Birthday, Chocolate Birthday and Chocolate Chip. The cakes will be sold out of the refrigerated bakery set at Whole Foods and are a take on the bakery’s signature cake truffles, redesigned for grocery stores.
After closing investment from fund Sonoma Brands in November, Tosi and the Milk Bar team first ventured into grocery stores aisles in April by launching a line of cookies. A self proclaimed grocery-store lover, Tosi said the debut was a moment she’s imagined since the age of 10. The goal of creating a second line was to create a more accurate representation of the Milk Bar experience — the bakery itself sells cookies, cakes, truffles, soft-serve ice cream, pies and more.
“If you only knew that Milk Bar made cookies, you wouldn’t really know Milk Bar,” Tosi said.
The cakes need to be kept refrigerated, she said, in order to maintain their fudgy center and crunchy exterior. The tradeoff for this is a challenging placement, with a lack of standardized locations in stores and a smaller set of brands to draw consumers’ attention. However, Tosi said there is still opportunity, noting that the consumer approaches this set with an open mind.
“[The refrigerated section] is a place where people still really go to search out new products and adventure seek,” Tosi said. “There is a part of Milk Bar where you absolutely know what to expect — it’s going to be delicious, innovative, creative and it’s going to blow your mind — but there’s also an element of we pop into your life when you least expect it.”
In the immediate future, Tosi said, the brand will continue to incubate the line within Whole Foods, launching new flavors and seasonal offerings. Though she has “lofty” ambitions for distribution, the Milk Bar team is approaching growth deliberately, she said. There will likely be a learning curve in transitioning from a bakery and ecommerce business to a packaged line of products, she noted, and achieving consistency is key, adding that it’s not just about packaging, the product must also deliver on its promise.
The Truffle Crumb Cakes, like the cookies, will only be sold in Whole Foods stores and possibly on Amazon. Though the brand’s ecommerce store mentions the lines, it only sells versions of the bakeries’ own products in order to avoid consumer confusion. The sales strategy comes from an understanding of how consumers approach each channel and the use cases for its baked goods. Ecommerce purchases, for example, are about celebrating special occasions, while the grocery store line is more an everyday indulgence.
Although some other premium dessert-focused brands, such as Foodstirs or Fat Snax, have tried to justify their price points by offering low-sugar or ketogenic versions of classic desserts, Tosi says there is a strong base of shoppers looking to indulge. The better-for-you options won’t always convert these consumers over, she said, and left “wide open space” for a challenger brand to come in.
“[They] are forgetting that everyone needs a cheat day and that ‘work hard play hard’ [still exists],” Tosi said. “What happened to the dessert? What happened to the beauty of indulging for the sake of indulging? That’s where we’re really going to show up.”
