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Inspiring Conversations with Yoonie Dan of Krust Bakery Cafe

Today we’d like to introduce you to Yoonie Dan. Them and their team share their story with us below:

Yoonie has a big passion and dedication of ingredient-centric food. She has extensive background in fine art – which influenced heavily on her cooking and presentation. She chooses her ingredients carefully, as an artist would choose a medium to rightfully carry out an inspiration. Over the years of working as a private luxury caterer and large scale restaurant manager, Yoonie wanted to build her own business where the gap of fine quality ingredients and premium cooking versus affordable pricing. She also craved the creativity, which is now enabled with her own business.

Yoonie saw a great opportunity in a tiny baking place in South Bay of California, where the weather was mild and beach breeze welcomed. She thought this can be the community where customers appreciate the fine quality food and bread and be open to an international inspirations.

She bought the bakery, kept the name, and learned the community and the store before introducing new recipes, kept some customer’s favorite items, and recently remodeled and expanded the space.

Each morning, Yoonie wakes up at 3:45am – thinking wow! What a time to wake up! Let’s keep my promises to my customers and bake the bread – and she loves seeing customers walking out of the store with a happy faces.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
As she took over the ownership of the store in January 2020, the world was introduced to a new challenge in our daily lives. COVID19 hit the nationwide in March and added a big hurdle to the bakery. Keeping up with the ever-changing policy to promptly adapt to new health guidelines, while indoor dining became unavailable, and soon after followed with restrictions on outdoor dining.

Back in March through later in May, the fear of virus was overwhelming that employee scheduling and to work-and keeping the store open became one of the biggest questions. Adaptation to a new business was one thing, but adjusting the lifestyle to pandemic-ready was another. It definitely wasn’t a smooth ride. But Yoonie always said during this time, “We must adapt to any given situation – life is about flexibility and resilience.” So the store remained open, and Yoonie kept the business as usual. And with the amazing support of the loyal customers, the store was able to stabilize through a such a fluid period of time.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Krust Bakery is a micro-bakery located in Redondo Beach. Striving for the quality, we make sure all our food are made with fresh produce, bake every morning, and use real ingredients. The motto of cooking is to provide the bread, pastries, and food that a customer can trust – just like a home-cooked meal. Also, we keep things transparent, never compromising the integrity of the food-making process. Just like all honest business owners, we want to be appreciated for our hard work and the quality of the food.

Krust bakery that takes international inspirations. We don’t limit ourself to one single country of origin, as we are a global citizen – like many of our customers! We have traveled around the world in our previous life of Krust and take our inspirations from the best of every world. ​We carry the amazing baguette – French – and to according to our customers “the best in Los Angeles!”; We make fine gugelhulpf – German, Menemen – a Turkish breakfast -, Earl Grey Tea Cake -English Tea Time Inspiration-. to name a few. So our motto is “We strive for delicious and genuine food!”

Our customers have commented on many occasions on our freshness of the ingredients. We are proud that we don’t take shortcut in the way we serve our customers, and our food is always full of flavors – not overdoing of any flavors – because being just right is very important.

We might be tiny on a scale of the map, but our passion and dedication is very big.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
Krust now plans to open until 5pm and looking forward to introduce more lunch menu including some amazing salads and platters. Please look out for more updates over time on our website and Instagram.

We are approved vendor of some of the exciting international products. These reflect directly to international traveling days. For the most exciting part – is that we carry Buerre Bordier, a premium artisan French butter that flies in directly from race within 24 hours of making. We get those shipped each month and we take pre-orders from our customers. We also do RedEspresso, remarkable Rooibos tea lattes that reminisce of South Africa. We miss traveling days and now love having a platform to bring some of our favorite stuff from all over the world to share with our community at South Bay.

 Currently offering cozy indoor seat and outdoor seat.

Our coffees are locally roasted, and we care deeply about our drinks as well as we do for food!

Pricing:

  • Pastries $3-$6
  • Lunch Menu $9-12
  • Drinks $2.50-6.50

Contact Info:

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