This spring, music-loving Boogie Lab, a lively artisan bakery and bar from Zagreb, took a bold step out of its home country of Croatia and opened its first US bakery in New York. It brings an innovative approach to bread-making across the ocean.
The first international home of Boogie Lab’s micro-bakery, Boogie Bakery, is in the US. Since April, the Croatian bakery has been selling sourdough-based breads, pastries and sandwiches to New Yorkers. In May, it opened a second Boogie Lab at the Arena Center, in Zagreb.
With a team of around 250 people, the business produces anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 products per day, an impressive volume for a sourdough-only bakery – for now, with plans to soon boost this capacity. Boogie Lab’s bakery works with fully automated lines producing 100% sourdough products of artisan quality and style – in recipe, structure and texture.
For ingredients, the best materials on the market are selected, from flour and butter to extra virgin olive oil. Their most-loved products, which helped establish the brand, are the sourdough focaccia line and the classic sourdough loaves: country, rye and corn with more advanced versions such as whole grain with oat porridge.
View this post on Instagram
Science and sourdough
The company was founded by Karlo Vulin, a trained food technologist and artisan baker and Mladen Vidović, a hospitality specialist. Their passion for new technology and culinary innovation is instilled into the Boogie project: “In each part of our company, someone is working on process improvements. We operate as a tech startup but still sell the end product – bread,” Vulin shares.
The wholesale baking company started sourdough production almost 10 years ago. Then, the Boogie Lab brand and hospitality venue was opened a year ago with two locations now in Croatia. “The business plan was simple: we wanted to develop a bakery concept that would be our showroom, through which you could learn everything about our mission and principles. Nutrition and sustainability play a big role in all of our products,” Vulin explains.
Aside from the eclectic music tastes and theme, Boogie Lab has a unique approach to bread making, a key step in which is a patent-pending precision fermentation technology. Its sourdough fermentation technique combines artificial intelligence with traditional techniques, they explain, which helps improve bread quality, the process efficiency and enables the business to expand the accessibility of its products. The proprietary AI fermentation technology incorporates smart fermentors and advanced sensors, to provide precise control over the baking process. The result: consistently perfect loaves with an unmistakable artisanal touch. “We use AI in combination with our smart fermenter. At the moment, it is learning the craft of building the perfect sourdough starter for each product,” reveals the bakery’s co-founder.
“With years of artisan practices, and a background in food science, our team has developed proprietary technology that will allow us to become the first scalable artisan bakery,” added Vulin. “What makes our bread so revolutionary is that we intertwine the power of nutrition with the power of technology. By using artificial intelligence, we ensure our baking methods produce distinct bread that is perfectly baked every time. We use only three ingredients to craft bread that is both minimally processed and easy to digest.”
The bakery also has a zero-waste policy, meaning it adopted unconventional practices (for a bakery) such as minimizing all inedible materials going to waste to upcycling everything that is edible.
View this post on Instagram
New York, New York
New York is a brave new world for the Croatian bakery: “This step is a big milestone for us. It took a lot of preparation and transfer of know-how to build a team that could run the business overseas,” Vulin tells us.
Boogie Lab USA has made a significant impact since its Q1 2024 launch. Its parbaked frozen sourdough products have been rapidly adopted by major food service distributors, including The Chefs’ Warehouse, enabling nationwide availability for food service operations. “Concurrently, we are engaged in promising discussions with leading retailers across North and South America, positioning Boogie Lab for further expansion in the consumer market,” the bakers anticipate.
In the months since the launch, the downtown Manhattan location has been transformed into a wholesale customer hub and technology showroom, driven by robust growth. This space now serves as a bakery showroom where chefs, industry professionals, and buyers can experience product presentations and collaborate on customizations. “Our first retail bakery is expected to open at a new Manhattan location in 2025. This strategic shift allows us to better serve our expanding wholesale clientele while preparing for our future retail presence,” he adds.
“Boogie Lab’s proprietary fermentation technology is the foundation of both our retail bakeries and wholesale operations, enabling us to efficiently produce 100% sourdough bread on an industrial scale while maintaining artisanal quality,” the co-owner adds.
Expanding is part of the plan, with new openings expected soon. “Our mission is to make better bread more accessible, in both ways – so consumers can find it wherever they want and that it becomes cheaper. This is why we have invested so much time into learning and automation,” says the baker about their goal to make Boogie a household name when it comes to sourdough bread.
Read the full article in Baking+Biscuit International, issue 4 – 2024, out now.
Photo: The Boogie Lab
