‘We want to be the Latin Starbucks.’ This Miami Cuban-American bakery is expanding north
Will pastelitos play in Peoria? Cafecitos in Colorado?
CAO Bakery is about to find out.
The Cuban-American bakery, co-founded in 2018 by the grandson of Vicky Bakery’s founder, has started franchising its stores, with the first non-corporate-owned restaurant ready to open before the end of the year, co-owner Tony Cao said.
That first franchise will open at 2060 N. University Dr., in Pembroke Pines, and the owners expect to open between seven and 10 new stores in 2021 — first in Florida, then in key locations throughout the country.
“We want to be the Latin Starbucks,” Cao said. “I want to blow it up, take it to the next level.”
This has always been the plan, Cao said, since he partnered with co-owner Carlos De Varona to split off from his family’s Vicky Bakery. The duo rebranded their Vicky stores CAO for Cuban American Original — but also after the last name Cao shares with his grandfather, Vicky founder Antonio Cao.
The pair, which owns nine stores in Miami-Dade County and three in Broward, has set its sights on first expanding to Florida locations. Their first target audience: South Florida “expats” who have moved to Central and North Florida.
“The customers have asked for it, and we’ve listened,” De Varona said.
That means CAO is targeting areas with Cuban-American populations, such as Tampa, West Palm and Lake Worth, and college towns like Gainesville and Tallahassee. Beyond that, CAO is honing in on longtime Cuban strongholds like New Jersey and Los Angeles, and also unexpected areas with new Cuban-American population growth, such as Louisville, Texas, North Carolina and Tennessee, De Varona said.
“We’re young, aggressive and the growth is important to us,” De Varona said.
Where some restaurant businesses have been crippled by the pandemic, CAO Bakery has leaned into the very nature of a bakery: quick-service food that diners expect to take away. De Varona said online sales have doubled in the last six months and the grab-and-go nature of Cuban bakeries means they were built to survive COVID-19 closures.
“We don’t depend on dine-in so we’ve been able to survive,” De Varona said. “That’s what the bakery business was 40 years ago, and that’s what it is now.”
The pair is aiming squarely at national franchises Panera Bread and The Corner Bakery, De Varona said. And they are leaning into their distinctly Cuban-American flavor.
“We bring a different flavor, the Cuban-American flavor,” he said. “We believe there is a need and a want for it.”
