For Pop-Up Owners, a Crossroads as Restaurants Return

Former Gramercy Tavern pastry cook Lauren Tran never expected her assortments of ube and coconut mousse chiffon cakes, longan macarons, and bánh bò nướng — a pandan-flavored tapioca and rice flour pastry — to appeal beyond her social circle. But when the recent pastry school graduate’s bánh boxes, a mix of Vietnamese desserts and French pastries, started selling out in minutes each week on Instagram, it turned her previous life plan on its head. “I was able to lean into who I am as a Vietnamese-American woman,” she says. Now, Tran is looking to translate that success into a business, Bánh by Lauren, that honors Vietnamese desserts with the respect and regard she sees given European and Japanese baked goods. Amid the endless stream of destruction that the pandemic blasted at the restaurant industry, pop-ups started by laid-off workers quietly shone as a tiny bright light in the grim darkness. Stuck at home, with little hope for full employment, the people who once cooked or served everywhere from fast-casual chains to Michelin-starred dining rooms turned to the best resource they had to stay busy and make some money: their own knowledge, heritage, and creativity. The rise of pop-ups — representing…
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