JC Desserts offers traditional and vegan cronuts.
On a Saturday morning in Lakeside’s Bryan Park, just past the produce stands, a line forms in front of a fryer beneath a pop-up tent. While some people visit the weekly market for fresh fruits and veggies, hundreds of others come with something very different in mind: cronuts.
“The smell of it, it’s very permeable, I don’t even have to fix but a couple in the pot, and the smell radiates all over the place,” Justin Ross says of the doughnut-croissant hybrid. “It hits you different when it’s hot and fresh.”
Ross, owner of JC Desserts, has gotten used to drawing a crowd.
“We do the frying and dipping, and you’re able to see it right up in front. It’s almost like going to Krispy Kreme and [watching the doughnuts] coming off the conveyor belt, you can see the whole process. It’s really cool,” he says.
Available at RVA Big Market and the South of the James Farmers Market, Ross’ version of the cronut made its debut last year. A chocolatier and baker by trade, the Richmond native founded JC Desserts in 2021. Looking to launch a staple item, something hand-held and unique, he kept coming back to the cronut.
“I aways kept it in my back pocket,” Ross says. “It was like, ‘Let’s take this to the next level’ — I’m not sure how people aren’t going to gravitate to it. And it’s been just that, it’s really taken off.”
Justin Ross, owner of JC Desserts
Cronuts were originally introduced in 2013 (and the name trademarked soon after) by French pastry chef Dominique Ansel at his namesake New York bakery. The many-layered buttery creation has become an iconic food of the past decade, attracting hourslong lines daily at the Soho pastry shop upon its debut.
“It was a big thing in New York already,” Ross says. “It wasn’t, of course, down here in the Southern states, and it still really isn’t.”
Cronuts bridge two ends of the baking spectrum: the croissant, an intricate, labor-intensive classic that takes a minimum of two days to make, including proofing the dough, and the doughnut, a comparatively easy treat that only requires a few hours to prep and cook.
In his first year of selling cronuts, Ross has unlocked an unexpected layer of his dessert business. Last month, he landed his first event gig for the Richmond Jazz and Music Festival. Changing flavors with the seasons, the fall lineup will feature pumpkin spice and apple cobbler varieties, available in original form or as bite-sized balls in a “cronut cup.”
Ross says it’s common for him to meet visitors from Fredericksburg or Washington, D.C., who travel to Richmond to track down his cronuts.
“I definitely tell the team that’s one of the reasons we have to be on our game all the time. We can’t be like, one day the dough didn’t come out right, or the icing isn’t the same as last time; people expect the same thing every time,” he says. “To see people enjoying it every week and coming back and the amount of new customers we see is truly something special.”
