Luxury pastry: seduction by all means

Pastry has known exponential growth since the rise of Instagram. The immediacy of colors and attractiveness of textures make it one of the trendiest hashtags in 2023, with 12 200 000 posts for Q1 alone. Some chefs are, therefore, happily embracing the social media trend, thus popularizing a sector that could seem opaque.

Cédric Grolet is a master when it comes to connecting with his online audience, through videos he films himself, and in which he happily shows the process behind his creations. Far from a learning tutorial, he rather offers magic, with videos showcasing complex pastries seemingly made in a snap. Aesthetics indeed play a key role in Grolet’s success. Impressive hyperrealist fruit-shaped pastries of which he alone owns the secret, attracting tourists from around the world, impatiently queuing in front of his shop on Avenue de l’Opéra. His appearances create hysteria. Yet, humbly, the chef doesn’t mind making himself available, by often leaving his atelier to meet his fans personally, and one then understands how much of a key role emotion plays in the audience’s loyalty when it comes to connecting with a chef or a place. Indeed, aficionados of Cédric Grolet’s pastries admire the man, the passion conveyed by this young chef, as much as the delicacy and technical aspect of his creations.

Considered as the best pastry chef in the world, Pierre Hermé benefits from a solid and long-standing reputation, with over sixty boutiques worldwide and a turnover of one hundred million euros in Japan alone, a market which today represents 40% of his income. His café concept in collaboration with Dior has created even further enthusiasm around the exclusivity of his creations: ultra-luxury at its finest, landscaped in futuristic-design spaces. In spite of this blatant success, he continues to innovate by partnering with young designers for his packaging, and by launching a vegan line. His recent partnership with the Walter Butler group, now majority shareholders of the brand, allows him to push his growth further: “The brand is doing well, with higher sales than before the sanitary crisis, and turnover should significantly increase over the next five years,” says Butler. The “nomad pastries” concept by the brand has, in fact, tripled sales via its website during the crisis.