- 16 hours ago
Jatee Kearsley built Je T’aime Patisserie in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, with a mission to make high-quality French desserts accessible to everyone, including customers who pay with EBT.
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00:03When it comes to opening up a business, people are so money driven. I'm not money
00:08driven. I stretch it, I pull it. Who told me to do that? Myself. So it was super
00:14important for me to make sure that regardless of what you got in your
00:17pocket, you could come inside here and afford something. My name is Jetay
00:24Kirstley, the owner and pastry chef of Jetem Patisserie.
00:30I think the calling of my life is always to help people. I accept EBT or food
00:36stamps because I accept all type of people's in my store. When you step
00:42inside here, you're not in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. It doesn't look like a place
00:45that accepts EBT, right? You would think this is a quote-unquote white-owned French
00:51patisserie, but it's not. It's me, baby.
01:00I'm going to have to get ready for this big catering order that I have. So this order,
01:05they ordered some specialty croissants from us and they ordered four flavors, four dozen each.
01:16All right, so I'm just going to pour the milk in. I was a pastry cook from about 2016 up
01:23until 2022,
01:24working for various famous, well-known people, giving a lot of my energy to other people's
01:32businesses. It was just like, how much longer are you willing to give your creativity away without
01:37any recognition or just even a thank you? And I was like, okay, well, I'm just going to take a
01:42chance
01:43to myself. And I mean, it worked out. What? I do this every day. I'm about to literally fill all
01:54160
01:55of these croissants. This isn't some like magical world that all these croissants got hand rolled
02:01on my day off. I was here on my day off doing all of these croissants by myself.
02:07I went to culinary school, but there was no baking program. I taught myself everything when it comes
02:13to French pastries specifically, thanks to YouTube and wasting a lot of products. You ready? You guys
02:19ready? To help me fill the croissant. I need you to cut. Yeah, yeah.
02:32So we're going to cook the host and you're going to fill them and then I'm going to top them.
02:35Okay.
02:36Okay. You have the control like this. You can just squeeze it. You don't have to worry about this.
02:41I literally manufactured this croissant recipe myself from my house. I say it's a black girl twist
02:51on French pastries because it is. Because I'm not like classically trained, like people may
02:58think like the things that I'm doing. It's not like the pure French way or whatever it is.
03:05A croissant is a croissant is a croissant, no matter how you do it.
03:09Laura, I'm just saying, so I don't know.
03:13I think one of our most expensive ingredients is chocolate. For a 30 pound box of chocolate is $180.
03:22Just ingredients alone is about, I would say, more than half of my revenue a month.
03:31Butter itself runs me about $125. For one case, I buy two a week. That's $300 just in butter a
03:38week.
03:39That's four times. That's $1,200 a month just in butter. Remember when eggs was like $5,000?
03:45How do you have a bakery with no eggs? I feel like I need to start charging more for this
03:50now that I think about it. New York City is expensive. This is not a city for small businesses.
03:56Do you know how much commercial rent in New York City and Brooklyn and Ned Stein? It's expensive, guys.
04:05My rent is probably like four times the apartments upstairs.
04:11I think my first huge expense was my dough sheet, which was like $15,000. I ain't never spent more
04:22than like $1,500 in my life. So to spend $15,000 on one thing and it's not shoes or
04:28bags, would I sort of
04:30leave my bank account? In my first year, I had a negative balance. I sat here with my Bible study
04:42group and I told them, guys, I have $2,000 in my bank account. I do not know how I'm
04:48going to pay
04:48my employees tomorrow. And then the next day I went viral and the Lord blessed my bank account abundantly
04:55with hundreds of thousands of dollars. Once we went viral that April, we ended 2024
05:01with about $385,000. Do you know what it felt like to see my bank account have hundreds of thousands
05:09of dollars in it? And for me to not spend no money on myself?
05:17So when people saw that this was a Black-owned patisserie at the high quality that it is,
05:23people were shocked. People were like, this girl is doing something that isn't normal for her
05:28quote-unquote culture or her quote-unquote neighborhood. And it's just like, we're all
05:33not a monolith. Fifth, can you go ask Chelsea for the catering boxes so that we can start getting these
05:38in boxes? And so that you can, I know I'm like, offsetting trying to get everything.
05:49I think that a lot of people don't talk about like when you go viral, what it does on your
05:55mental
05:55health. Like virality brought me a lot of money, but I also slept in here for a week straight without
06:01showering. I didn't want to let people down. I didn't want people to be traveling from so far to
06:07come here for no pastries to be in the case. Mentally, I was not okay.
06:16The toll that it took on my body, my mind, and my spirit, people don't talk about that, you know?
06:23Oh, maybe all of them will have their own box. This is my friend. She helping me because she
06:28know I need help. She came in the store one day and I was like, oh my god, I need
06:32help. And then I was
06:33crying and then look at the Lord sending me a friend named Faith. That's why you got to be
06:36faithful to the Lord because he'll send you the things that you need. She was like, I'll help you.
06:41I was like thinking, I was like, am I gonna walk up and like insert myself? And I walked up
06:45and I was
06:45like, apologies for eavesdropping. But if you do need help, like I don't mind volunteering my time.
06:52Like a random ass stranger just like offering help. That don't happen in New York City, you know?
06:57And also it's definitely made me realize like how hard it is to own a small business.
07:02You're your boss, you're your employee, your HR, you're you know, developing your own business,
07:08you're your marketing team, and that is exhausting. So today I'm gonna help her drop off these to
07:13Rockefeller. Yeah, because it's a big order and it's like I have three deliveries today,
07:20so I had to, you know, ask for a few of my friends to come help me deliver because small
07:25business
07:25definitely rely on their family and friends. Let's see. Oh, okay. Perfect.
07:35Okay. I'm gonna show you guys how we do our specialty croissants. I have like my own terminology
07:41that I just use on my own. I call this the lock-in method, but it's called venoiserie,
07:46lamination, all those fancy, fancy terms. But we're just gonna put the butter inside the dough.
07:54So this process, it creates the layering of the croissants. When it's done, it has about like
08:0090 layers of dough butter, dough butter, dough butter, dough butter.
08:06Okay.
08:06I specifically wanted Chitain Patisserie to be in a neighborhood where people don't have things.
08:14Historically, Bed-Stuy is an underserved, overlooked food desert. There's no fresh produce. There's no
08:21good grocery stores. So it was super important for me to make sure that it impacts the neighborhood
08:26by providing high quality fresh pastries every day. This is the croissant, right? I stretch it,
08:33I pull it, and then I just roll it. And when I'm rolling it, I'm trying to make sure that
08:38it's a nice even roll so they sit like...
08:42So when you bake them, they just like...
08:46When I first opened in 2023, I was selling a butter croissant for like $3.75. It's like $4.50
08:53now.
08:55I hate raising prices because I really want to be a place that people can afford to come to.
09:01Like I have one employee who'd be like, yes! That's too cheap! But there wasn't going to be
09:06a moment where someone walked into Chitain Patisserie and wasn't able to afford it.
09:16What made me decide to accept EBT or food stamps? I kind of knew what my community was dealing with.
09:24And it was important for me to accept it and like defy the odds of where people kept this stigma
09:29on EBT and food stamps.
09:31When I say community, people think I'm always talking about like just Black people, but it's not the case.
09:36Because what does a food stamp person look like, right? Like it looks like me, it looks like you,
09:42it looks like your friend. Like anybody could get food stamps. Like the people who use EBT,
09:48they're so thankful. And they're like, you know, I wouldn't be able to afford this if you didn't
09:53accept EBT. People thought that accepting EBT was going to actually ruin my business.
10:00A lot of people were like, oh, you don't want those type of people in your store. And I was
10:05like,
10:06those people? You mean my mom, my sister, my cousin, my friends? Like, those are my people.
10:12I think it was more so like, I want to prove you wrong.
10:17In the span of three years, we have quadrupled ourselves and everything I have gotten is because
10:23I accept all type of people in my store, even EBT holders, snap holders.
10:29Nana, the red velvet croissants are done proof and I'm just egg washing them a little rustically.
10:36And then we're going to pop them in the oven and they bake at 325 for about 15 to 20
10:42minutes.
10:48I also don't want to burn myself.
10:54So this is the chocolate hazelnut, uh, cremou.
10:57Cremou is just a fancy name for pudding because it's just chocolate pudding.
11:01But you know, they got to make it sound French and fancy. So they say chocolate hazelnut.
11:06I gotta stop cursing.
11:12You know, when it comes to opening up a business,
11:15people are so money driven. I'm not money driven.
11:19Like, I'm trying not to cry.
11:33Unfortunately, we need to make money, right? It just is what it is.
11:39And of course, we have to make money because it's New York City, you got to survive.
11:42But if I could run this business without making money, I would.
11:45Because it's not about money for me. It's about impacting my community in the best way possible.
11:52Making sure that people have access to foods that are Manhattan style, blah, blah, blah.
11:59But like, you deserve this to be in your community.
12:03That's why I've got no business partners.
12:04Because people are so like, how are you going to make money?
12:07We got to make money. We got to make money. We got to make money.
12:09It's like, duh, I know.
12:10Like, we got to make money.
12:12But like, there's a single mom who literally can't afford a $6 croissant.
12:24I do need help. I do. I'm not going to lie.
12:28I do need help.
12:29But I can't, I can't compromise the integrity of my business for money purposes.
12:36And I care about people more than I care about money.
12:40So, yeah.
12:42Sandra, pass me the tray of plane, please.
12:45The person I was before I opened the business, she was so carefree.
12:50But once you own a business, all of that stops.
12:52You have to now focus on this baby.
12:56I don't even got no kids, but this store is my baby every single day.
12:59All right.
12:59So, I'm going to pray really fast, and then we're going to open the store.
13:04Father God, in the mighty name of Jesus, thank you so much for today, God.
13:07And even when I don't want to, God, you continuously send people here to see the goodness of the works
13:14that you have allowed me to do, Father God.
13:16So, bless this food, Lord.
13:17Bless this atmosphere.
13:18We invite the Holy Spirit.
13:20And we are so grateful that you have chosen your 10 Patisserie to be the place to impact people.
13:26In Jesus' name.
13:28Amen.
13:32I think that people like authenticity, and I think that the support from the people
13:38has been so consistent and so abundant and so, like, just beautiful because I'm only being jeté.
13:46I don't know how to be anything else.
13:49I don't pretend to be anybody else.
13:51I'm just jeté who likes French pastries, who like to do it my way,
13:56who like to be real, raw, and authentic.
13:59I'm very rich in support.
14:01I'm very rich in community.
14:05If people equal money, I am a trillionaire.
14:11Like, truly, I am.
14:13Yeah.
14:14You want milk or anything?
14:15No, just black?
14:16All right.
14:17All right.
14:17You're welcome, hon.
14:18Have a good day.
14:21You know, someone called me on the phone the other day,
14:24and they started speaking French.
14:26And I'm like, hello?
14:29Je t'aime patisserie.
14:30And they're like, bonjour, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
14:32And I'm like, nah, baby, you're just black.
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