Originally from Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire, Dorian Tudeau already has everything he needs to be great. After a two-year pastry CAP in Rennes followed by a one-year chocolate CAP in Tours, he joined the teams of Pascal Caffet in Troyes, one of the best workers in France with whom he cut his teeth. Building on this experience, he then came up with the idea of launching his own business. But it’s difficult to launch into entrepreneurship at only 19 years old. “Companies did not want to list me as a supplier so that I could benefit from competitive prices. They didn’t believe in my project. On his family’s side, the story is the same. “When I presented my project to my parents, they did not take me seriously, asking me to find a real job.”
In 2020, in the middle of a period of confinement, Dorian then had the idea of doing lives on social networks to boost his visibility. Sandrine Quétier and Delphine Wespiser accept his invitation to get behind the stove and share recipes with him on Instagram, enough to gain subscribers. The Covid therefore allows him to mature his project, partial unemployment requires. Despite the reluctance, he launched the pastry chef’s box in September of the same year. “The idea is therefore to provide low-cost equipment for baking with a video course produced by me and a booklet” each month. The “apple éclair” boxes are born with a piping bag, the “strawberry 2.0” box with a spatula, the “lemon meringue tart” box with the tart ring.
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The beginnings do not live up to his expectations, and even turn into a fiasco. Dorian confesses: “for each box sold, I lost four euros. I only sold 17 boxes the first month, I was disgusted. It was disillusionment. The second month, it was around 50 sales. After four months, I reached the milestone of one hundred sales.” A progression that helps gain the trust of businesses. “Brands started coming to me as I had more subscribers and the concept took off. They gave me preferential rates and I worked locally with factories near Tours.”
As the pastry chef’s box gains customers, logistical questions arise. Dorian is overwhelmed by the scale of sales. “I prepared the packages in the living room, then in the garage. My parents helped me, then my sister. Then my neighbors and friends came to treat up to 1,800 boxes.” Creation, marketing, recipes, accounting, logistics and even after-sales service, the young pastry chef wears multiple hats for several months. The pace is so frantic that he has to start delegating. “In September 2022, I entrusted this to a logistics center while keeping an eye on it, it became professional.” Enough to relieve his family and friends.
The success of the box is coupled with performances on Instagram and TikTok. One of his lightning videos posted on Facebook exceeds one million views. Recognizable among hundreds of accounts, the pastry chef with the black gloves and golden ring, his signature, wants to stand out by “bringing entertainment to pastry”. Dorian then came up with the idea of making XXL cakes which he offered to the most deprived or to public services such as hospitals, town halls and schools. His cakes weigh “10 to 20 kilos” and cost around “200 euros” of raw materials, the views he accumulates allow him to become profitable by repaying the cost invested. Visibility which the young man also uses during the humanitarian missions he carries out. During his trips to Chad or the Congo, his “community allowed him to recover funds thanks to stories”.
With an increasingly large community, 500,000 on Instagram and 700,000 on TikTok, the Tourangeau is spotted by personalities. The YouTuber with seven million subscribers, Inoxtag, ordered his cake to celebrate his 20th birthday, just like the singer Dadju a few months later. Media exposure forces him to surround himself with staff in order to “better negotiate contracts, be supervised, have technical resources” due to lack of time.
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Building on the success of boxes and networks, Dorian is multiplying projects. In 2023, he launched with his partner NoSense, a macaron personalization service intended “for business communication”. The pastry chef explains that these are only “B to B” services, and once again there is success. He works for the release of the Dadju series, the Roland-Garros tennis tournament, Paris Fashion Week, the Rugby World Cup, Jacquemus, Tesla seminars and even JETEX Dubai. He also says he prepared “600 macaroons for Matignon” intended for former Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne. At the end of the year, he even delivered the Zidane family in person during the end-of-year celebrations, traveling near Aix-en-Provence to deliver the “legend”.
Very concerned about anti-waste, Dorian has also launched HIGEA, a brand of fruit sugar. He explains that it is about “recovering Rungis fruits destined to be thrown away”. The product marketed in liquid form “has a sweetening power twice as strong as conventional sugar and a particularly low glycemic index”. It is an innovation on the market which “could be a solution for diabetics” he says. Despite everything, he prefers to put things into perspective regarding the potential of this activity. “The machine we need costs more than 17 million euros, currently we have to rent it for production.” He imagines “fundraising and advertising to make HIGEA known to the general public” in the coming years.
With so many activities, Dorian Tudeau is undoubtedly building a name for himself in the small world of pastry. His business even benefits those around him. “I hired my mother, she left her job to come work with me on the boxes. I would like to employ my father as a pastry chef for personalizing macarons. My work-study student is also my best friend.” However, Dorian wants to stay close to his land, he rents “a premises near Tour of more than 100m2” where he bakes and makes his videos for Instagram. A success that helps him gain self-confidence: “social networks helped me overcome my shyness,” he suggests. With 800 to 1,000 boxes sold each month and partnerships with prestigious hotels like that of Pourtalès which allow him to work for “Leonardo di Caprio, Chris Brown and even the Kardashians”, the young pastry chef does not hide his ambitions. He now aspires to work for large companies like “SNCF and Air France, but you have to have the shoulders and the means,” he puts things into perspective. Surely a matter of time.