Summary:
Recorded July 13, 2021 – Having captured the hearts of Canadians on MasterChef Canada Season 2, Christopher Siu is determined to make his baking dreams a reality. We hear how Chris blends his pharmacy background with his love of baking to create unique whimsical cakes and pastries.
Show Description:
After finishing eight stressful years becoming a pharmacist, Chris worked for two years before he changed the trajectory of his life and became a baker.
Chris loved baking as a child. Inspired by childhood memories of the cheesecakes his father would bake for birthdays, he is building his cake and pastry empire one store at a time.
He loves the creative side and science of baking. Baking requires exact measurements and knowledge of how ingredients react one with another. Chris feels that his pharmacy background has been beneficial in helping him grow and expand his business.
A passion for baking, knowing what he wanted to achieve, but not knowing how to get there, got him to where he is today.
Being an introverted young man, the books in the library were his friends. At a certain point he decided to come out of his shell and this is how he met his fiance, in 2017. He also decided to enter MasterChef Canada and made it to the 5th place. In 2020 he participated again and took 1st place, capturing the hearts of Canadians along the way. MasterChef gave him confidence and connections.
At the core, Daan Go Cake Lab is a modern French style patisserie that focuses on cakes, pastries and entremets with an Asian twist in technique and flavour. Chris opened his first location in 2017 in Scarborough and a second location followed in Kensington Market in 2018.
Today he is scheduled to open two new bakery locations, one in Times Square in Richmond Hill and another in Mississauga. Chris is also looking at Vancouver for possible expansion.
Chris’s family supported him both morally and financially when he began. His fiance keeps up with what is trending and continues to challenge him on what he can create. She comes up with ideas that are deemed impossible and then he makes it happen.
Chris focuses on development, being the face of the company for PR purposes and his team takes care of the rest.
Developing a cake can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months.”Innovation is encountering a mistake and working your way around it,” says Chris. When he encounters a problem that can’t immediately be solved, he sets it aside and comes back to it with a new perspective as much as a few months later.
Chris and his fiance love Chinatown and Kensington Market. They love the atmosphere and frequent Vietnamese restaurant Anh Dao, on Spadina. He also enjoys visiting Tap Phong which is the kind of store “that has everything”.
So why expand out of Toronto with his new locations? Chris feels being downtown you reach a smaller radius of customers due to competition. In the suburbs people will travel further to buy his cakes.
What is the 5 year Daango Lab Cakes vision? To have locations across Canada, USA and Asia.
This episode has so much good advice and is full of wise words from Chris’s early beginnings to the present day. It goes without saying, these cakes are worth travelling for!
Website: www.daango.com
IG: @daangocakelab, @bakersiu
