Sam Butarbutar and Wenter Shyu of Third Culture Bakery
Our series Talk Shop is a career and style profile featuring personalities from various industries. They are shot on location in Cherry Creek. This month, Editor in Chief ESTHER LEE LEACH interviews Sam Butarbutar and Wenter Shyu, owners of Third Culture Bakery. Sam and Wenter are wearing clothing from their closets and are photographed on location at their workplace in Aurora.
PHOTOGRAPHED BY ESTHER LEE LEACH
Esther Lee Leach: Sam, you were born in Indonesia and then moved to the San Francisco Bay area to study toxicology at UC Berkeley. How did you go from Toxicology to creating pastries and running these very successful bakeries?
Sam Butarbutar: I’ve always LOVED being in the kitchen. Even in elementary school, I have fond memories of helping my mom make Black Forest Chocolate for friends and family during Christmas time. But, I never dreamed of being in the kitchen professionally. In school, I gravitated towards science, chemistry and toxicology, because I was always curious how things work. One summer in college, I decided to volunteer in a French bakery for fun, an all my childhood memories came back. It brought me so much joy and I realized that there are so many similarities between baking and science. The same curiosity in science has pushed & helped me become a better baker; you have to question everything & be hungry to learn more!
ELL: Wenter, you were born in Taiwan and then moved to San Francisco to study fashion at the Academy of Art. Tell us your story of how you made the switch to baked goods!
Wenter Shyu: Ever since I was in high school, I remember wanting to be a fashion designer - I watched and studied all the fashion shows of Paris, Milan, New York and so I thought that was my path. But when I was in the Fashion Design program at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, freshman year, I took a pattern-making 101 and absolutely hated sewing! So I made the switch to Visual Merchandising and loved it and have been in love ever since. At the time, I was working at Coach and was on the visuals team and loved that. Before graduating, I was hired at Emporio Armani and got my taste of luxury fashion. I was on the visual team there too and was in heaven.
But after working years in retail throughout high school and college, I had a quarter-life crisis and moved to Taiwan for a year and backpacked through Asia. I moved back to San Francisco after and decided I wanted to learn to bake. I taught myself in the kitchen with the help of a dear pastry chef friend Jen, one thing led to another, and found myself opening Third Culture Bakery two years later with my now fiancé Sam!
ELL: We need all of the details! How did you two meet? Sam, what was your first impression of Wenter?
Sam: We met the old fashioned way, at a baker’s brunch! It was a monthly brunch where local bakers in the East bay area would hang out, eat food, and talk about baking. I actually didn’t see Wenter until our fifth brunch. When someone told me the night before that a new guy was coming, I went on full stalking mode. “Who is this guy? I need to find his pictures from Facebook”. I saw on his profile that he owned a cupcake company, and thought, “Ugh. A gay guy making cupcakes? How stereotypical!”. But then, he had a picture of himself doing yoga and I thought, “Wow. okay! Kinda cute”. We all had brunch the next day, and two weeks later I decided to ask him out. And the rest was history!
ELL: Wenter, describe the experience of meeting someone with a similar passion and then going into business together?
Wenter: I’ve always had such a drive and dedication to working in my business that I’ve never really matched well with anyone because they didn’t understand my need to complete everything I set out to do and accomplish my goals - and when I met Sam, he really impressed me at how hard he worked to make his choices of starting a bakery viable - a drive that I didn’t see very often. So I was really taken aback and impressed. Plus his palate and his desire to create something new and different but relevant to his culture really aligned with what I was wanting to do.
I actually asked him about going into business together about six or so months into dating and he totally rejected my idea - but after talking more, we decided to pull the trigger a few months later! It was hard at first, not only were we dating and trying to better understand and get to know each other, but had to make these really hard pressing decisions that affected our livelihoods - and with that came a level of trust and practicality that I can’t even put into words - and I’m forever grateful.
ELL: Tell us more about Third Culture Bakery! How did you come up with the name? How many locations do you have now? And we have to know more about the very popular Mochi Muffin!
Wenter: So we were going through lots of things we could call this bakery venture and none of them were really sticking. And one day, we were saying how the bakery needs to reflect our upbringings in different cultures and I asked him if he’s ever heard of the term “Third Culture Kids”. He said no and I explained what it was and he loved it and we kinda just went for it and named our bakery after the concept. It really represents us and what we wanted to do perfectly! So Third Culture Kids, or “TCK”, are kids who grew up in a culture that is different than of their parents - originally referring to children of immigrants in the U.S. - noticing that these kids didn't really attach themselves fully to American culture and didn’t attach themselves fully to the culture of their parents, but instead creating a hybrid of the two and forming what is referred to as “Third Culture”.
But now it can refer to anyone that is exposed to a different culture or grew up in a country outside of their parents’ mother country and expressing themselves in a “third culture’ manner - belonging to nowhere and everywhere - a global generation of sorts.
Sam being born in Indonesia and growing up in New York, I grew up in both Taiwan and Los Angeles, we wanted to take ingredients and foods from our childhoods and make them in a new way!
ELL: Describe your roles in the company?
Sam: I’m everything in the kitchen! I make sure our staff knows how to make our muffin inside and out & I’m also in charge of creating new recipes each season--the best and most stressful part of my job! I also oversee our bookkeeping and accounting.
Wenter: Everything outside of the kitchen - mostly branding, marketing, design, operations, engagement, outreach, and partnerships.
ELL: Sam, how do you keep the work-life balance when you are working with your partner?
Sam: Yoga and running! I love to exercise, and I make sure to carve out an hour or two purely to myself and also to burn those experimental donuts I have to eat.
ELL: Wenter, what is the best and worst part of running a business with your partner?
Wenter: Worst part? being with them almost 24 hours a day and having nowhere to go when you get mad at them! Haha. Best part? Everything! I’ve heard horror stories about working with a significant other but none of that has really been the case with Sam and I. We can talk through and troubleshoot problems and ideas together in real-time on such a deeper level since we’re both in the space together so it allows for us to move a lot faster and stronger. He motivates me to be better in and out of the bakery.
Third Culture Bakery: @thirdculturebakery
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