Jon 'Cake' Garcia: "In a 20-square-meter workshop, I've managed to make 1,000 cheesecakes a week."

BarcelonaI interviewed Jon Garcia (Bilbao, 1991) on a Wednesday at the establishment he opened just a month ago in Barcelona, ​​his third. Located on Carrer de Sant Pere Més Baix, it's called Jon Cake & Coffee. The shop on Carrer Assaonadors in the Born district is closed for a few days because he needs to renovate. Jon studied aeronautical engineering in Terrassa and worked in his field for three years, but one day he told his boss he was a folding chef. It was 2018, and he had decided to study cooking at the Bellart School in Barcelona. He was 27 years old and had realized that cooking was his passion, and he wanted to nurture it. Today, his cheesecakes receive rave reviews, and among the new challenges he's set for himself this year are cakes featuring artisanal Catalan cheeses; he plans to make one every month. There's a second challenge: making cheesecake-filled croissants. Thirty-four people work in his company, and he plans to grow to fifty workers.

Where does your passion for cooking come from, which you recognized when you were 27 years old?

— At home we always remember that when I was 15 or 16, I asked my mother to make me a risottoShe told me, "Do it yourself," and that's how it all began, because I made it myself. In my family, I have a grandmother who worked in a restaurant, an elderly man who worked as a cook on a ship, and my mother, who is a very good cook.

You enrolled at the Bellart school, and then did an internship at the Celler de Can Roca.

— I was there for eight months. I started in January 2020, at Celler de Can Roca, and the pandemic caught me. They closed us. We reopened in May, and I finished in August. Back then, I wanted to join a restaurant that was chasing a Michelin star, or one that had one and was aiming for a second. I was looking for an ambitious project, but it was 2020, a very difficult year, and everyone told me it wasn't the right time. So I went to the Basque Country, and while working there, in the fall, they put us on lockdown again; it was the municipal lockdown. In one weekend, we went from having 140 reservations to 11. And then I decided to return home to my parents. And while I was in the car, heading back to Catalonia, to live with their parents again, I was brainstorming; I wondered what I could do for a living, and that's when the idea of making cheesecakes hit me.

How did you end up in cakes?

— I'd seen on Instagram, on Álex Cordobés's account, that he made ten in a day, and they sold them, and then I did the math. If I sold each cheesecake for thirty or forty euros, I'd earn three hundred euros a week. I was also familiar with the tradition of cheesecakes from the Basque Country: they originated at the Zuberoa restaurant in San Sebastián, which is now closed. And it was the La Viña bar in San Sebastián that popularized them, because they also offered the recipe. So, in November 2020, I got going, did some testing, and began selling them to friends and family at a price that seemed like a gift. I started with the classic recipe, with Parmesan cheese, Gorgonzola, Grana Padano, and mascarpone. I opened the Instagram account to tell people about it, and little by little, I started receiving orders from friends of friends.

So you went to a workshop to make them?

— I rented one by the hour, which was located in the Les Corts neighborhood. In December of that year and in January 2021, I rented a table and oven from a pastry shop in Gràcia, on Carrer de la Riera de Sant Miquel. By the last week of January 2021, I was already making 100 cakes in seven days, and I sold them all. So in February, a friend came to work with me. We'd always talked about starting a cake consulting business, but for now, we're just making cakes. With him, during the month of February, we went up to 200 cakes in a week. And as we continued to grow, at the end of February, I hired a friend, Sandra Amor, who is currently the executive chef of Jon Cake.

So you didn't have a place yet?

— No, but we realized we needed one. In May, we found the space on Assaonadors Street in Barcelona's Born district, which has 54 square meters, which we're required by law to divide into 34 square meters for service and the remaining 20 square meters for the bakery. We started making 400 cheesecakes a week here, and by 2:00 p.m., they were already finished. So, we realized that, to maintain our sales schedule, we had to grow. We rented another space to store what we needed, and we grew in person. We grew little by little. Then we expanded to another seven, and today we're already 34 square meters. In the 20-square-meter bakery on Assaonadors Street, I've made up to 1,000 cheesecakes a week.

In 2023 you opened the second Jon Cake.

— In the Les Corts neighborhood, yes. It's called Jon Cake & Wines, and you can eat and drink wines. And I haven't told you that a friend of mine made up the name Jon Cake as a joke, and since it worked and it sounds good, I chose it.

And now, one more step. You're building a third location, this one where we are now, on Sant Pere Més Baix Street, and another in Girona.

— We'll open the Girona location in May. This one has been open for a month, and we also make coffee, because we offer something unique to each one. Our Born location is closed because Endesa has to make some changes to the electricity meter, but as soon as it's good, we'll be back.

Does each store have different cheesecakes?

— Yes. In Sant Pere Més Baix in gorgonzola beech. In Assonadors, Cabrales.

Are all cheeses suitable for making a cake? What's the limit?

— The limit is the cheese's original selling price. It doesn't make sense to turn a cheese that costs 200 euros per kilo into a cake, because each slice should cost 15 euros. And the same could happen with a truffled string cheese. Now, however, if they're commissioned, if they ask me to make them, I'll do them. Another limit when making cakes is the type of cheese. Let me explain. To turn Fonteta cheese into a cake, I would need a very large quantity. So I consider it a waste of time. And if I did that, the same thing would happen as I just mentioned: the resulting price would be very high.

I've seen that in the cover letter for the cakes you define them with degrees of intensity from 1 to 5.

— The classic, the first thing I made, is high-grade, a 5. The Manchego pie, on the other hand, is a 2.5. I believe numbers universally explain the quantity and intensity of the cheese.

Let's talk prices, Jon. How much does a slice of your cakes cost? And what do you think of the cuts that are sold at 0.99??

— I don't like to talk about cuts, but rather about grams. I sell 150-gram portions, and I sell them for €5.30; therefore, from a 1.5-kilogram cake, I make ten portions to sell. Right now, I sell a 1.5-kilogram cake for €45. A 750-gram cake for €24. And a 375-gram cake for €13. But, aside from the grams, I make thick cakes. For example, for a 1.5-kilogram cake, I use a 22-centimeter pan, so I get the thickness I want. If I used a larger pan, the cake would be thin. Regarding prices, it's worth mentioning that the slices sold at €0.99 are 100 grams, and to continue, I think they must be losing money. The price is an attractive selling point, but the numbers certainly don't add up. If you buy quality raw materials, it's impossible to sell it for €0.99. Another story is that they have popularized one of the types of cheesecakes that they prepare at that price, but the rest they sell at 2.99 and, if you put toppings above, which they also sell, then the price increases (up to 0.80 euros more). I am clear that I do not want to add toppings Nor do we give the option to choose them because that's putting food in it that isn't artisanal, that isn't made by me. My product is artisanal, it's made by us from start to finish, and our store was the first in Barcelona to sell specialized products. And when I count everything we've made over the years, I come up with up to 400 cheeses that we've turned into cakes.

What do you plan to do in the coming months?

— To start, I'm already testing pastries. We've trained, and we'll make cheesecake-filled croissants. We'll also make flans. Parisian; chocolate pain ave; buns, and everything made with our signature, which is to do it very well. I want to continue the project I started the year with at the Assaonadors street location, which is a monthly cake with artisanal Catalan cheese. When we reopen, we'll restart it, and, to continue, I expect to end the year with a workforce of fifty. And I still have one more dream.

Tell me.

— My ultimate goal is to open a rural house with a restaurant in Cerdanya, where I can feed fifteen people. I would be the cook. It's my dream.