Judging from the popularity of his cakes sold in other cafes, he opened his own shop in Wanli three years ago and watched with slack-jawed amazement as jams formed outside the front door every day with customers rushing in to buy pastries.
"It was weird. All we did was decorate the store nicely and people flocked from all around to Wanli of all places," Wu said. By the second year Yannick was filling orders for hotels and pastry shops, but now goods were being delivered by the company's own fleet of small trucks.
Then last year he opened the second store on the ground level of his eight-story Neihu baking facility wedged on a barren lot between an elevated highway and a development of IT factories. Opening a cafe-cum-pastry shop in a warehouse wasteland, instead of in downtown Taipei, might seem like a recipe for failure, but, as Wu told it, he'd learned a thing or two about customers from the Wanli store experience.
"I figured we could open pretty much anywhere and people would come," Wu said, not intending it as a boast. And sure enough, a tangle of cars could be seen outside the shop on Friday.
Wu's bewilderment at Yannick's success, however, is hardly a sign of a lack of ambition. Having built his mini-pastry and confectionery empire in five years, he's focused on taking his show on the road and evokes the keyword "globalization" when laying out his plans.
"We're not going to bother with southern Taiwan, Hong Kong or China. We're going straight to either Tokyo or New York. We haven't made up our minds yet on which to choose, though," Wu said.
He then adds that the upcoming moves will entail a lot of time sitting at the desk of his office, where plaques noting his various achievements and charitable donations fill the windowsill. This is not a prospect that he likes to contemplate.
"The biggest problem with being the boss is that I have to handle all this paperwork now," he said, pointing dejectedly at a pile of papers on his desk.
"Just to keep my sanity I still spend a lot of time on the production lines every day to oversee things and help out. Using my hands to make things, that's when I feel best."
Yannick stores can be found at 127-5 Ma-shu Rd, Wanli Township, Taipei County (
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