How Melbourne pair built New York bakery empire Supermoon Bakehouse

Two Melbourne men who introduced the “cruffin” to America are pulling crowds at their New York bakery — and they’ve gotten the tick of approval from none other than comedian Jerry Seinfeld himself.

Have you seen a more delicious pastry line-up?

Melbourne man Aron Tzimas’ Supermoon Bakehouse was already a big deal in New York City — then Jerry Seinfeld visited.

The comedian and his wife Jessica took a stroll to the Lower East Side bakery, ordered croissants, a “cruffin” (a croissant muffin) and shared the experience on Instagram.

The moment changed Tzimas and Supermoon co-founder Ry Stephen’s business as they knew it.

A year prior, in 2016, the duo moved to the Big Apple to open the bakery.

Pastry flavours are ever-changing at Supermoon.

There’s something for everyone at Supermoon.

You can’t go wrong with a chocolate meringue croissant.

“We get a lot of famous of people coming in, but when Jerry came in, everything else became a blur,” Tzimas says.

He never imagined the humble bakehouse to grow in popularity so quickly.

In the early days, lines queued around the block to get a taste of the short pastry menu of traditional and quirky-flavoured croissants, cruffins, doughnuts and soft serve.

Stephen, of Olinda in the Dandenong Ranges, is known for pushing boundaries with his baking.

He worked for pastry chef Gary Cooper (Sassafras’ Proserpina Bakehouse), then spent four years at Cacao under Laurent Meric and Tim Clarke.

Doughnuts are a hot seller at Supermoon.

There’s a croissant flavour that’s every colour of the rainbow at Supermoon.

“My friend Jon and I were working together at Cacao and one day he turned to me and said ‘Paris next year?’ ‘Sure,’ I replied and that was that,” Stephen said.

“I enrolled in French classes and from then on until I left, about seven months, I spent two hours a day studying and practising French.”

Supermoon’s menu changes weekly depending on what’s fresh and best.

Sometimes there’s corn-flavoured soft serve and other times a twice-baked banana split sundae or rosemary and blueberry croissants, or a buttercream carrot cake doughnut.

The bakehouse has cracked almost 100,000 Instagram followers and had rave reviews in New York media.

Tzimas and Stephen honed their craft at San Francisco’s Mr Holmes Bakehouse where they popularised the ‘cruffin’ in the States, and arguably the world.

The pastries were so popular the bakery was one night robbed of its recipe book.

The journey to success for Tzimas, 33, began in his Melbourne hometown of Brunswick.

“It was one of the suburbs where all the poor kids came from, now those same kids have moved back to the area (as its become trendy),” he says.

“I was pretty lucky. I had one of those childhood’s where everyone who lived on the street was the same age as me. We’d catch the bus home (from school) and just hang out.”

You’ll find Supermoon Bakehouse in the Lower East Side.

At uni, Tzimas spent most of his time at RMIT Melbourne’s city campus studying advertising; an industry he loved for it’s creativity.

But he figured out quickly it wasn’t where his passion lay, unlike Stephen, who was already working as an apprentice baker after leaving Upwey High School in year nine.

Tzimas loved technology and spent years working in jobs that honed his skills — he launched hospitality industry mag Gram, ran a people’s market and worked at a creative agency that designed the look of cafes and restaurants like St Ali and Mr Miyagi.

In 2012, Tzimas was offered a tech job in San Francisco where he was introduced to Stephen by a mutual friend.

Pastry chef Ry Stephen has come a long way since his time at Upwey High School.

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By that time Stephen had spent 2½ years in Paris, where he’d worked for Ralf Edeler and Yannick Queré.

After two successful years working at Mr Holmes Bakehouse, the pair moved to NYC.

You’ll find Supermoon in a unique single-storey warehouse in Lower East Side of New York City. The boys are looking to expand their empire.

Supermoon also hopes to introduce bread to its menu soon.

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@kara_irving