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This recipe is a perfect storm of sorts: in the pandemic years (our Banana Bread Era), we couldn't rely on much, but we could rely on bread rising. Bakeries and baking became a form of therapy, delivering the scientifically proven dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin hit only baking and baked goods can provide. Then—an influx of home-bakers hitting culinary schools, a new crop of hobbyists-turned-business owners, and a burgeoning market for more and more baked goods.
But there’s more to the story. Even before we were emotionally eating our way through lockdown, other ingredients were on the boil. From Master Chef to Great British Bake Off, Sugar Rush, Is It Cake?, and everything in between, baking as TV entertainment reached a fever pitch in late 2020, while bakers reached celebrity status and the cult of baking began to set in.
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The balance of ingredients, the timing, the tech and the technique all conform to produce a smash hit. A treat we couldn’t have conceived of without the sum of its parts; worthy of our hard-won, highly exhaustible 2020s-era attention.
Such is the story of Rockstar Bakers, a mass-appeal genre of sugary, flaky, delectable sweetness that is so deeply prolific in 2024 that it’s almost hard to see through the cloud of hype culture-fused flour dust to begin to grasp at how we arrived here in the first place.
2.Cronut
Dominique Ansel Bakery,
New York City, USA
Over 1,000 Cronuts are sold daily, with punters lining up hours before the bakery opens. That’s pretty much the same as a new-release iPhone, with over 1,000 sold every hour when a new model drops.
Bagel
The Bagel Store, Brooklyn, USA
At the height of their popularity, rainbow bagels were as popular as Harry Potter books, with thousands selling each week.
1.Rainbow
ice cream
5.Black
Morgenstern’s Finest Ice Cream, New York City, USA
Black ice cream delivered a 10% increase in overall sales for Morgenstern’s during the summer of its release—the Galaxy smartphone had the same impact for Samsung.
Pancakes
Soufflé
Gram Cafe & Pancakes, Osaka, JapaN
Gram Cafe is essentially the Disneyland of bakeries—with locations worldwide selling thousands of soufflé pancakes daily, with wait times often running well over an hour.
3.Japanese
4.Freakshakes
Patissez,
Canberra, Australia
In their time, Freakshakes were as freakishly popular as the Pokemon Go game. This Canberra gem sold over 10,000 freakshakes in the first three months.
Nutritional Facts
Profit Margins
Restaurant
Bakery
(Restaurant vs
Bakery Edition)*
- Gross
60-70%
40-50%
- Net
5-10%
10-15%
Ingredients
(Set up Costs)
Equipment, lease/rent, renovations, licensing, initial inventory, marketing, staffing.
Equipment, lease/rent, renovations, licensing, initial inventory, marketing, staffing.
Ingredients
(Recurring Costs)
Rent, utilities, ingredients, labour, maintenance, marketing, packaging.
Rent, utilities, ingredients, labour, maintenance, marketing, supplies.
Operating Costs
Low
High (complex menus, higher labour costs, larger venues)
Expected Time To Achieve ROI
3-5 years
1-3 years
Scalability
Easy (wholesale, online sales, additional outlets)
Tricky (large investments, logistical considerations)
Risk Factor
High
Low
*Results may vary
SYDNEY
MELBOURNE
BRISBANE
PERTH
GLOBAL
Sydney’s rockstar bakers spin their world-class pastry skills to craft queue-worthy creations, with social media sensations and seasonal iterations of familiar flour-based formats setting them apart.
Long-standing superstars of the scene, like the immaculately formed pithivier from Lode Pies, fill our feeds alongside new must-tries like the vibrant green pandan and coconut brioche at Shadow Baking and adorable onigiri croissants from Tenacious Bakehouse.
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MELBOURNE
SYDNEY
BRISBANE
PERTH
GLOBAL
Brisbane’s baked good obsession really came to fruition in lockdown, when queuing for hours for Agnes’s kouign amanns was the only thing that got us out of the house. Since then, the city’s bakery scene has exploded, with a hyped treat on every corner—but you’ll still have to queue.
BRISBANE
SYDNEY
MELBOURNE
PERTH
GLOBAL
Ask anyone who’s tried their luck at Chu Bakery or North Street Store on a sunny Saturday, and they’ll tell you we’ve always been a little bakery-obsessed in Perth. But a flurry of post-pandemic microbakers slinging viral little treats has spawned a whole new level of uprising.
PERTH
SYDNEY
MELBOURNE
BRISBANE
GLOBAL
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GLOBAL
SYDNEY
MELBOURNE
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9.Macarons
Ladurée,
Paris, France
Ladurée sells millions of macarons annually across its global locations.
cake
Watermelon
8.Strawberry
Black Star Pastry, Sydney, Australia
Over 1 million slices of the Strawberry Watermelon Cake have been sold since its creation. It’s widely considered to be the world’s most Instagrammed cake.
Cake
7.Raindrop
Smorgasburg,
New York City, USA
The Raindrop Cake saw lines of hundreds of people at Smorgasburg, with thousands sold during its debut season.
Frappuccino
6.Unicorn
Starbucks,
Global
Starbucks reported that the Unicorn Frappuccino contributed to a significant boost in sales during its limited release, with some stores selling out within hours.
Ice cream
10.Taiyaki
Taiyaki NYC,
New York City, USA
Taiyaki NYC serves hundreds of their signature fish-shaped cones daily, with long lines often forming outside the shop.
At the same time, algorithms were developing a sensational appetite for food content, with baked goods meeting the criteria with satiating universal visual appeal. Since it was cooked up 11 years ago, Dominique Ansel Bakery’s Cronut has over 180,000 hashtag mentions on Instagram (and has been named as one of TIME magazine’s best inventions). Cue Instagram feed-induced FOMO and a new social identity closely linked with the latest sugar-laced creation.
Fast forward to right now—we’re on a roll and the dough is rising—a self perpetuating combination of elements guaranteed to deliver an end result. With Instagram and now TikTok ever-hungry for more, new, and next—2024 bakeries feed the social beast at pace. A hero treat is the golden meal ticket (a “Hot Cross Scroll” or a Portuguese Tart croissant hybrid with miso glaze that takes four days to make). Or, the global cross-pollination of the “crookie”, a croissant cookie mashup from Boulangerie Louvard in Paris that was first crafted in 2022 before taking flight on the winds of the TikTok algorithm in 2024 to arrive at copycat bakeries all around the world.
10 OF THe Most Hyped
TREATS OF ALL TIME
The sugar coating is in the economics of this well-formed pie. It’s enough to entice top chefs and renowned restaurateurs out of the kitchen and into the bakery—a chance to flex creativity with much lower margins and sky-rocketing hype. Among the long list of examples in the surefire chef-led bakery category is Neil Perry opening Baker Bleu, Federico Zanellato and Lode Pies & Pastries, and Akimba Bread by Lindsay Oates. In New York, it’s 11 Madison Park serving vegan croissants.
Meanwhile, on the treat-eaters side, the barrier to entry might be a queue or a drive to the other side of town, but the bill is always much friendlier than the newest restaurant, the latest pair of Adidas sneakers, or a trip to Italy. The end effect, however, is the same—a moment of sugary sweet peace in a chaotic world and a plentiful hit of serotonin.
Packaged up in pretty branded boxes that bear the same status as designer handbags, these crazy treats represent the recipe for hype in 2024, whisking together a storm of circumstances and social algorithms into a science that shows no signs of slowing down.
The sugar coating is in the economics of this well-formed pie. It’s enough to entice top chefs and renowned restaurateurs out of the kitchen and into the bakery—a chance to flex creativity with much lower margins and sky-rocketing hype. Among the long list of examples in the surefire chef-led bakery category is Neil Perry opening Baker Bleu, Federico Zanellato and Lode Pies & Pastries, and Akimba Bread by Lindsay Oates. In New York, it’s 11 Madison Park serving vegan croissants.
Meanwhile, on the treat-eaters side, the barrier to entry might be a queue or a drive to the other side of town, but the bill is always much friendlier than the newest restaurant, the latest pair of Adidas sneakers, or a trip to Italy. The end effect, however, is the same—a moment of sugary sweet peace in a chaotic world and a plentiful hit of serotonin.
Packaged up in pretty branded boxes that bear the same status as designer handbags, these crazy treats represent the recipe for hype in 2024, whisking together a storm of circumstances and social algorithms into a science that shows no signs of slowing down.
Follow THe Hype
In Your City
Everyone knows Melburnians will line up for literally anything—but with the advent of Dröm Bakery things changed. Hungry punters were literally flying in from far-flung corners of the country and heading to the suburbs to indulge in the Bayswater bakery’s crescent-shaped croissants, modelled after the moon the bakers worked under ahead of its much-anticipated opening.
Situated in a former panel-beater’s shop Dröm has just celebrated its first birthday and maintained that big opening energy, with head baker George Dardamanis proudly inventing new treats and flavours each month to keep the hungry masses returning for more.
Brisbane’s baked good obsession really came to fruition in lockdown, when queuing for hours for Agnes’s kouign amanns was the only thing that got us out of the house. Since then, the city’s bakery scene has exploded, with a hyped treat on every corner—but you’ll still have to queue.
Ask anyone who’s tried their luck at Chu Bakery or North Street Store on a sunny Saturday, and they’ll tell you we’ve always been a little bakery-obsessed in Perth. But a flurry of post-pandemic microbakers slinging viral little treats has spawned a whole new level of uprising.
Oozing old-school glamour, it doesn’t get much more decadent than New York’s Lafayette, a French cafe and bakery. Busting out some of the city’s flakiest morsels like their seasonal cronut collabs (think Cherry Old Fashion Suprême) to those viral stuffed croissants daily, it’s worth braving the queues for that first magical bite.
MELBOURNE
SYDNEY
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"We didn’t know what to expect, but when we opened, especially for the first month… it was overwhelming."
"People wait for them outside the door, it’s just crazy."
"People wait for them outside the door, it’s just crazy."
"People wait for them outside the door, it’s just crazy."
"People wait for them outside the door, it’s just crazy."
"On average, we sell about one thousand cookies a day."
"The Cube Croissant has seen lines around our building."
"Don’t expect to get away without a queue, even on a Monday."
"The Cube Croissant has seen lines around our building."
