Chef Tosi tells Culver students that successful businesses anticipate what customers want

Celebrated pastry chef Christina Tosi, founder of Milk Bar, told Culver Academies students that successful entrepreneurs anticipate what customers want before they know they want it.

“It’s like they (businesses customers love) are reading our minds into the future,” she said. “They’re creating things we don’t even yet know are possible, and they’re delivering that to us. They’re in the environment, in the atmosphere of what we want and what we crave and what we need, but they’re not just repeating back something we told them we wanted.”

A two-time winner of the James Beard Award, often called the Oscars of the food world, Tosi is known for taking classic American treats and turning them into culinary classics, such as Birthday Cake, Cereal Milk ice cream, Compost Cookie and Milk Bar Pie (formerly Crack Pie). She is the host of “Bake Squad” on Netflix, the first female to appear as a judge on the “Master Chef,” a TED speaker and she has written seven best-selling cookbooks. She was at Culver as part of The Ron Rubin School for the Entrepreneur’s annual speaker series.

Tosi praised the students, most from the Rubin School, for their thoughtful questions, sharing with Culver faculty that it was refreshing that the students asked questions centered on entrepreneurial leadership and less on cost structures and profit.

She also said she was impressed by the students she met on the campus of Culver Academies, an elite leadership-oriented boarding school.

“I just have this overwhelming feeling that the future is in really good hands,” she said.

She also said that when she was in high school, not only wasn’t there a school or program for entrepreneurship, the word “entrepreneurship” was rarely used.

“No one invested in us the way that Culver Academies, your teachers, your parents are investing in you,” she said.

Tosi said growing up she never thought of starting her own business or of becoming a chef. She majored in applied mathematics and Italian at James Madison University. But she always had a deep love of baking, especially for other people.

“I loved watching the way it made people feel. That feeling of feeding someone is something that made me very happy,” she said.

She told the students they don’t need to have a five-year plan, but to follow what sparks their curiosity.

In answering a question by Aria Holtzman ’27 (Hinsdale, Illinois) about how Tosi stays consumer-centric while still staying grounded, Tosi told the crowd of about 175 students, most from Rubin School, that the way to create a meaningful long-lasting business is to anticipate customers’ desires. That requires observing the world closely and thinking beyond obvious answers. For example, when Milk Bar asks followers for new ice cream flavors, people usually suggest existing ones.

She said she’s learned that the best way to determine whether something will be a hit is when she and her employees are “obsessed” by it, not by depending on consultants.

“It’s a really fun part of building a business, running a business,” she said.

Connecting to Culver’s theme this school year, “Find Joy, Fuel Joy,” Tosi said joy is a skill that requires practice, just like learning a language.

“The more you do it, the better you are going to get at it,” she said. “To be great at joy you’ve got to know how to find joy, you’ve got to know how to fuel joy and you have to know how to protect joy,” she said.

 In an earlier session with 37 Honors in Entrepreneurial Studies students in Roberts Auditorium, Adam Trumble ’26 (Toronto) asked Tosi about how she keeps to her one-day-at-a-time mindset. Tosi said she reminds herself of that more than ever now because she has a tendency to overthink things and dwell on mistakes. She said the key is to simply show up for work again the next day.

“You’re going to have a good day, a bad day, a medium day, just show up, just keep showing up and leaning on, ‘I did the best possible job I could,’ ” she said.

She said no one is successful overnight. Successful people are those who keep at it. She told the students they shouldn’t beat themselves up over mistakes.

“No one has all the answers. There is no master plan. You’ve just got to show up every day and be like, ‘What’s the problem I’m trying to solve today.’ … You do that long enough over time, you’re going to get where you’re going,” she said.

The speaker series is made possible through an endowment established by Ron Rubin ’68 W’63.

“Our speaker series aims to expose our audiences to those entrepreneurs who lead in innovation, who demonstrate exceptional leadership qualities and who are clearly reflective in their practices,” said J.D. Uebler, director of The Ron Rubin School for the Entrepreneur.