A birthday post by actor Trisha Krishnan sparked an unexpected Tiramisu frenzy across cities.
The photograph, wishing actor-turned Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Joseph Vijay on his birthday, showed the pair surrounded by cake and three portions of tiramisu.
Dessert lovers were quick to identify the tiramisu as Hyderabad-based patisserie Concu’s signature offering.
The mango vanilla cake came from Chennai’s Stubborn Baker Tanvi Bokaria, and the strawberry white chocolate cake from Chennai-based The Chef House.
Tanvi, who baked the Kerala vanilla bean and mango cake, said that she got the call fot the order a week ago but did not know what it was for.
A birthday post by actor Trisha Krishnan sparked an unexpected Tiramisu frenzy across cities.
The photograph, wishing actor-turned Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Joseph Vijay on his birthday, showed the pair surrounded by cake and three portions of tiramisu. The post quickly garnered 5 million likes on Instagram, 3.1 million shares and 53.8 thousand reposts.
Dessert lovers were quick to identify the tiramisu as Hyderabad-based patisserie Concu’s signature offering. The mango vanilla cake came from Chennai’s Stubborn Baker Tanvi Bokaria, and the strawberry white chocolate cake from Chennai-based The Chef House.
Tanvi, who baked the Kerala vanilla bean and mango cake, said that she got the call fot the order a week ago but did not know what it was for. “We have had a surge in followers on our instagram page, and since Wednesday afternoon we have been getting order only for the mango cake,” she says adding that there are orders for over 40 mango cakes so far, which is priced at ₹3,500.
After six months at Cordon Bleu in London, Tanvi attended the Culinary Institute of America, in New York. She then worked with Le Bernardin and the Michelin 3-star 11 Madison Park before she returned to Chennai to start her own venture The Stubborn Baker in February 2021.
The Concu Story
Within minutes of the post going up at approximately 7.30pm, Concu stores in Hyderabad reported a surge of online orders for the tiramisu, especially at the Kondapur outlet.
Startled at the sudden spike in orders for turamisu during mango season, the Concu team did some investigation and realised it was triggered by Trisha’s post. Although the actress, who has 9.7 million followers on Instagram did not explicitly identify the dessert in her post, fans figured it out from the packaging and began sharing screenshots, tagging Concu, and turning both the tiramisu and the patisserie into an online talking point, well beyond Hyderabad.
The staff at the store says they are still getting numerous calls, endless tags and orders, and the day has been busy with the team doing everything they can to keep up with the demand.
Swati Taneja, co-founder with Sahil Taneja, says they have bumped up the production of the dessert in response. “Our tiramisu has gone viral, and we now have to keep up. Today, our Bengaluru store has reported four times more sales for the dessert, while the demand in our 11 store locations of Hyderabad have shown a 40% increase.”
Swati says the Tiramisu portion posted by the actor is from the Hyderabad airport location.
Sahil and Swati Taneja started the brand as a take away patisserie in Begumpet in 2012, near ITC Kakatiya. It was a small place where the duo did everything from cleaning to baking themselves. “We were only working on pre-orders. We weren’t even ready to stock anything extra. We came to be known through friends and social media,” she says. She did a basic baking course in Hyderbad before heading to London to do his PGDM in pastry and confectionery. Sahil did a basic baking course in Hyderabad, and after working in Harrods London as a pastry chef, he returned to Hyderabad in 2012 after noticing a gap in the city’s European dessert scene.
Conçu has expanded well beyond Hyderabad with stores in Bengaluru and Mumbai. Chennai is next. And, as it turns out, an unlabelled dessert in a birthday post has given the brand an unexpected boost for their next big launch.
