Why a Frenchman opened a bakery in Texas

I did not open a bakery. I want that clear before anyone drives to Austin looking for croissants, because two people already have.

The gap between two countries

I am French. I live in Texas. I have never fully committed to either, and that is the whole joke — the one I kept telling online for months before any of this existed.

In Paris you sit on a terrace for an hour with one coffee and nobody rushes you. In Austin you order an iced coffee the size of your forearm through a window, without getting out of the car, and it is somehow also correct. I love both. I make fun of both. That gap turned out to be a place a lot of people live in — French people in America, Americans who spent one summer in Paris and never got over it, and everyone who has ever ordered a croissant in a drive-thru and felt something complicated about it.

I was not building an audience. I was complaining about bread, in two languages, and it turned out that was a business.

The joke that would not leave

The comments started asking the same thing. Not “where do you get your shirts” — nobody asked that yet. They asked whether the things I was saying existed anywhere outside a caption. Whether you could wear the joke instead of just liking it.

So I drew the least subtle version of it I could think of. The Statue of Liberty, holding a croissant instead of a torch. “An American Legacy” underneath, in the kind of type you would put on a college sweatshirt. Half tribute, half provocation, entirely stupid in the way I wanted.

I sat on it for two weeks because I was fairly sure it was too much. Then I posted it, and the replies made it clear that too much was the point.

Independence Day, on purpose

The first drop went live on 4 July 2026. Three designs, two colours each, printed in a run small enough that I could have carried the whole thing in a car. Nothing held back for a second wave, because there was no second wave planned.

The hoodies were gone before the week was out. That sounds like a good problem, and it is — right up until you are answering emails from people who ordered a size that no longer exists. Half of the first run still says sold out on the site today rather than restocked, and that is a decision, not an oversight.

What I actually built

Eighteen pieces. Tees, hoodies, caps, socks, a cup. Printed to order in small runs in Austin, shipped tracked to twenty-seven countries. No warehouse, no season two of the same design, and one person answering contact@broissant.co — me, Monday to Friday, usually the same day.

It is not a bakery. It is closer to a running joke that got a shipping account. But the part that surprised me is how many of the emails have nothing to do with sizing. People write to tell me where they were living when they first saw the account, or which of the two countries they miss.

Eros Brousson

French, based in Austin, Texas. Writes the posts, draws the designs, prints the runs and answers contact@broissant.co. Usually the same day.

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