A chocolate croissant from RMY Patisserie is beautiful in the way that a suspension bridge is beautiful—you can sense the precise skill and immense effort responsible for its creation. Take a bite of said croissant, and appreciation becomes sheer joy as dozens of layers of buttery pastry dance across your tongue.
From his croissants, it’s clear that RMY Patisserie founder Robal Matewos Yebyo is a meticulous baker. Sit down with him for a chat, and it quickly becomes clear that he brings a similarly intentional, detail-oriented approach to his burgeoning wholesale bakery.
The “RMY” in RMY Patisserie represents both Yebyo’s name and his heritage: Matewos is his father’s name, and Yebyo is his family name. Yebyo traces his love of pastries to childhood visits to Eritrea, his parents’ homeland (they immigrated to the United States before he was born). He explains that since Eritrea was colonized by Italy before gaining independence, there’s a vibrant European-influenced cafe scene.
“I really got to enjoy gelatos and pastries daily, and I feel like that was something that I always yearned for growing up—here in Minnesota, a lot of those things aren’t available,” he says.
After graduating from South St. Paul High School, Yebyo attended the University of Wisconsin River Falls for business marketing before pivoting to the restaurant industry. “Hands-on experiences—working and giving products straight to customers or guests—is more rewarding to me than an office career,” he explains.
Yebyo’s resume includes stints at Brasa, Cafe Latte, Lucia’s, and Gigi’s Cafe, which doubles as a production bakery for several of Kim Bartmann’s restaurants. “Cooking and working for all these other chefs opened my eyes to different possibilities in the culinary scene, and that's where I found baking,” he says. “The overnights, kind of just by yourself, it’s very quiet. It's nice, you could really focus on shaping and making the product.”
“Then the pandemic hit, and I was kind of forced to find: What is it that you want to do?” he continues. “I found that baking is what I want to do.” He honed his viennoiseries (French pastry) baking skills with a year and half-long stint at Marc Heu Patisserie, and then attended the accelerated pastry program at HRC Culinary Academy in Sofia, Bulgaria. In Bulgaria, he also worked at acclaimed chocolate shop La Fève, where he made bonbons and pralines.
Once he returned to Minneapolis, he took a position at Patisserie 46 that focused on bread production. “Afterwards, I kind of felt like I've done bread, done chocolates, done viennoiseries—it's time for me to start my own thing.”
Amber Anderson, Yebyo’s partner and a fellow hospitality industry alum (they met at Gigi’s Cafe, where she worked as a server), handles social media and business management for RMY Patisserie. “It's really fun to be able to support my partner, to do whatever I can to make sure that the skill set that he has can be shared,” she says.
From the beginning, Yebyo has focused on positioning RMY Patisserie as a wholesale bakery—he has a wholesale license and works out of a commercial kitchen in Plymouth. However, potential clients were hesitant to bring on a brand-new pastry vendor. That’s where RMY Patisserie’s pop-ups come in—they’re a proof of concept that helps build name recognition and demonstrates interest from the public.
“It's been a good way to show business owners people do like it,” says Anderson. “We'll come out [to a potential client’s location] and we'll give people a chance to respond.”
Since their first pop-up at south Minneapolis letterpress shop Bench Pressed this past June, RMY Patisserie has held several pop-up sales each month, at businesses including Misfit Coffee, Marty’s Deli, and Story and Teller. They also have a booth at the Zimmerman farmers market, which Yebyo uses as an opportunity to test out new pastries.
The RMY Patisserie menu is designed to showcase Yebyo’s technical baking skills. There’s a core lineup of four French classics: a butter croissant, chocolate croissant, pistachio roll, and raisin roll.
“That is my point of reference for anyone that wants French traditional pastries,” says Yebyo. “I usually then have one viral pastry like a cookie croissant or s'mores croissant, and then I have one technical pastry that's kind of a specialty item that I came up with that you won't find anywhere else.”
The viral and technical pastries rotate periodically, with October’s menu featuring a double-baked s’mores croissant and a chocolate blackberry lattice croissant. “I try to stick to tradition and also incorporate my taste into it,” Yebyo says. “If you're coming in and getting pastry from me, you're getting a piece of me—my history and my experiences.”
Yebyo recently landed his first wholesale accounts: Hola Coffee carries his pastries daily, and Misfit Coffee will be serving RMY pastries Tuesday through Sunday starting on October 8.
This month, customers can also find RMY Patisserie at Bench Pressed (October 5), Pilllar Forum (October 19), the Ambit Media Makers Market (October 20), and a weekend brunch takeover at Tullibee at the Hewing Hotel (October 26-27).
Looking to the future, Yebyo plans to establish a solid base of wholesale viennoiseries clients, and then eventually add breads and chocolates to his product line up. Nothing in life is certain, but we get the sense that we’ll be seeing a lot more from RMY Patisserie—and that it will be beautifully executed, just like all the glorious layers in those chocolate croissants.
