The Career Ups And Downs Of Milk Bar Founder Christina Tosi

Christina Tosi isn't your average cookie, and she doesn't crumble easily. From her beginnings as a high achiever in college to a culinary superstar, Tosi has beaten the odds both as a pastry chef and, ultimately, a business owner. Her talents have also gone from behind the countertop to the small screen, having starred in a few reality cooking shows such as "MasterChef USA" and "Unique Sweets" to multiple guest appearances on talk shows like "The Drew Barrymore Show."

Perhaps her biggest victory was opening her own bakery chain called Milk Bar. She called it her happy place, but in 2023, she stepped down as CEO of her own company to focus on creativity. "My brain is constantly in motion. Creativity is my fiercest fuel," she says on the homepage of her blog called "The Bake Club."

Let's follow this extraordinary baker turned businesswoman from making sweet treats with her mother as a little girl to getting her first big gig as David Chang's pastry chef at Ssäm Bar, taking a risk and branching out on her own, first in a basement then ultimately making the world a sweeter place with big box retail collaborations.

Christina Tosi was born in Berea, Ohio. She moved to Virginia after her parents split up, and in college, she majored in both mathematics and Italian. But something wasn't adding up. Even though she did the hard work and had gotten those degrees, there was something missing. Both of her grandmothers loved baking, and Tosi remembers times when she would bake with all of them at a young age.

"Baking was a really big part of my upbringing," she said in a Fortune Magazine interview. "We didn't bake to be fancy; we baked because it was something we did. It was our conduit; our pipeline to community, togetherness to sharing."

After college, she flew off to Florence, Italy, where she thought she would become a translator. But eventually, she returned home and started working at the French Culinary Institute and immersed herself in work. It was bittersweet; learning everything about baking was exciting, but it took a toll. There was no time for family, so she missed a lot of life events with them, and, as she told The New York Times, she felt like a "terrible family member."

After college, Christina Tosi wasn't sure what to do next. But one thing was clear: she wanted to do something that would get her excited to wake up every day. After college, she worked at Bouley, a French restaurant in Manhattan. The schedule was grueling, with a six-day workweek.

But Tosi wasn't deterred by the arduous hours. She even added to her schedule by working for Saveur once a week as an editorial assistant. This was all a plan leading to something bigger, and deep down, the pastry chef asked herself a very important question. She said in Inc., "What is that one thing I could do that's going to make me excited about waking up in the morning and that I'll never get sick of? Making cookies." 

She was making all of these fancy desserts for the restaurant she was working for, but beyond loving the art and craft of creating them, they weren't something that represented who she really was. Eventually, she met and worked for Chef David Chang, and he invested in her dream, giving her enough money to open her first Milk Bar in 2008.

Christina Tosi and David Chang met in 2005, he was the creator of the Momofuku group, a culinary company that now has several full-service restaurants around the United States. Tosi was hired by Chang, but it wasn't in the kitchen at first. The budding pastry chef was doing office work, a position that didn't even have a name, only to be called "et cetera."

Chang became a mentor and offered Tosi heaps of advice. In a podcast called "Gimme Good Food Dude," the duo waxes nostalgic about how Chang gave advice about rolling out new products, using a famous female group to drive home the point.

"I remember you telling me, 'You are Destiny's Child right now, you are not Beyonce,'" Tosi recalled to Chang. "You said that I needed to slow my roll, pave the way for myself, and earn the trust. 'BBQ soft serve is something you can offer when you're Beyonce.'"

At the time of this writing, Milk Bar now has 10 locations in and around New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and Las Vegas. Tosi's brand is even in the cookie aisle at major grocery stores.

There is no shortage of cooking shows to watch, and Christina Tosi has been part of the small screen action. Starting in 2011, she appeared in 15 episodes of the reality show "Unique Sweets." From there, she appeared with Gordon Ramsay on his cooking competition show "MasterChef USA" for seven seasons. She wasn't prepared for the demands doing TV would require.

"My first season of 'MasterChef' was tricky," she wrote in a Time Magazine article. "I took a risk going into TV. I was confident it was the right risk and confident I'd break down barriers as the first female judge — and one that was previously only known for the sweeter side of the kitchen. But I had no idea how hard it would be! I agreed to wear too much makeup and squeeze into dresses that just weren't my jam."

In 2024, she made her series debut in the season three finale of "The Bear," where she participated in a "funeral party." Her experience on that show was much different than on "MasterChef USA." She says in an article for Today that being invited to do it was "incredibly humbling and super cool."

Christina Tosi and David Chang started as friends and eventually became business partners, a transition that wasn't as smooth as it could have been. In a New York Times interview, Chang expressed how the adjustment was surprising to both of them.

"She was becoming her own thing, and I didn't know how to deal with it," Chang said. "I wouldn't say it was rough, but we didn't have any reference points. I don't think we knew how to talk to each other as business people."

However, that relationship is still strong despite the change in dynamics. Just ahead of Milk Bar's grand opening in Los Angeles, Tosi admitted on the David Chang Podcast, "Opening a restaurant is stress and nerves and questioning everything, nausea, not sleeping through the night."

Even though Chang felt that Tosi's success was effectively changing the way they communicated as a team, he noted on his podcast that he still celebrates her business sense, "You beat me at stubbornness," he said. "Someone is more stubborn than me!"

Christina Tosi wasn't quite sure what to do after Milk Bar became a success. On one hand, she didn't want it to become an oversaturated chain, on the other hand, she wondered what it could become under the ownership of a great food company.

She says that Milk Bar isn't a traditional food business, and making it bigger than what it is, at heart, is not her goal. She doesn't want it to become another strip mall storefront because it goes against the spirit of what she wants you to feel while eating one of her wonderfully weird trash cookies.

"There is the question of what is the end game," Tosi said in an interview with Eater. "Is the end game to own it outright? Is the end game to sell it to a great food company like Mondalez, or Mars, or Hershey's, or what have you? They would take the Milk Bar business and make it into something incredible that would inspire me 25 years ago in the grocery store in Virginia in incredible amazing ways."

She even questions whether to take it public. But on whatever trajectory she decides to take her brand, she knows each path is driven by different forces and she has to take them all into consideration to, as she says, "start to work backwards."

Christina Tosi had a desire to create sweet, delicious snacks for people; it's in her blood. But how did a young college mathematics graduate go from crunching numbers to crunchy cookies? The simple answer is that she learned from the best. But it wasn't just about how to mix and measure ingredients, it was also a lesson in business training.

"I worked for David Bouley," she said in Eater. "I worked for Thomas Keller in the front of the house at Per Se for over a year. I learned as much from as many people as possible. From that, you learn what works, you learn what doesn't work."

With that she opened her first Milk Bar location in 2008. She told Lewis Howes in his podcast that she took off sprinting with the opening of her first bakery, and every day they figured out the good and the bad. And there were plenty of mistakes, but they didn't have time to sit around and dwell on them. Instead, they took them as a learning opportunity.

Conveniently, her first brick-and-mortar was located right next to Ssäm Bar, owned by her employer and mentor David Chang.

Although Christina Tosi was great at making desserts, she was new to the commercial part of it. She had no idea how to make things work when it came to running a business. Even with all the advice she was getting from David Chang, she still had to gain the experience. And it wasn't always good.

Along with her Milk Bar company, which was enjoying great success, Tosi created an extension of that bakery called "Milk Bar Life." It was supposed to allow people to have a Milk Bar experience at home. But it didn't quite work out.

The reason may have been that people didn't want to stay at home to have their desserts. They wanted to cheat on their diets in a public setting. But Tosi doesn't look at failure as losing something. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

"As a boss, as a CEO, as a creative director, as a chef, I've learned that failure will always come," she writes in Time. "I've learned to give it a big squeeze, smile at it, humble myself to it and then use it as a springboard to send me on my way to strength, success and fulfillment."

Along with raising pastries, Christina Tosi also had to raise money if she wanted her brand to go anywhere. It wasn't an easy task, she says. There were tough conversations to have with investors who haggled with her over funding. "'I don't think you should have this much. I think I should have this much,'" she told Eater. "Learning how to not shy away from those conversations 'cause they're real, if you're gonna do it, those are real conversations, and you have to be able to advocate for yourself."

That was one of the important lessons she learned while fundraising. She also explained that having Dave Chang as a partner wasn't helpful, and being the only female among male partners also made it tough. "All those things are realities."

Despite the difficulties, Tosi finally got funded by RSE Ventures in 2017. The money would help create more Milk Bar locations, e-commerce possibilities with a bigger digital presence. Some of that money also went into her Milk Bar Life business extension which ultimately didn't do well and had to be shuttered.

Wanting to share her Milk Bar ideas with fans and other interested people, Christina Tosi created The Bake Club. It's an online blog in which she wants to connect with people. "Find more pockets of time between the kitchen and the office discovering and spreading what I believe are the secrets to life. This site is my way of sharing all the other sides of who I am," she writes in her bio.

The site is filled with all kinds of recipes and tips for budding bakers. From birthday cakes to cupcakes to cinnamon buns, there is a variety of dessert ideas. She explains on her website that she's an obsessive overachiever and even though her success started with an unfrosted birthday cake and compost cookies, it's still not enough.

For her, it's all about sharing. Whether it's how to make delicious frosting or reveal a handy life hack through her Beyond Baking mailer, Tosi wants to share the spirit of Milk Bar with everyone. "I adore the human spirit in all its imperfect ways and I love celebrating people exactly as they are."

The success of Milk Bar was only a drop in the pond compared to her success as a mom. Now with two small children to care for, it was time to make a move. That move was to Nashville. Christina Tosi stepped down as Milk Bar CEO to focus on her family, but she didn't walk away from the kitchen.

The James Beard Award-winner is still creating what she is known for (like Milk Bar collaborations with Taco Bell), only she isn't doing it in a commercial bakery kitchen in New York City. The spoils of her labor are being made in her home kitchen amidst the hustle and bustle of her family. Milk Bar seems to be doing well, its expansive online retail space offers a wide variety of delectable options.

In a story for Grubstreet, Tosi says she used to be obsessed with output, and the only thing that's changed is the venue. She isn't throwing in her oven mitts just yet, "Maybe this is the story of it: I love to bake. This is what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life."