See and Be Kitchen
Leaders
- AChrissy TraoreOpen profile
- ABen Salif TraoreOpen profile
Who are we
Artisanal sourdough wholesale bread & croissant franchise
Why we do it
See & Be Kitchen is bridging the market gap between artisanal bread, which offers quality at a small scale, and large-scale production, which often sacrifices quality for scalability. Under the strain of working 100 hours and facing a shortage of employees, the artisan baker finds themselves at a breaking point. Through years of experimentation, we designed a franchise that produces the highest quality bread at a wholesale scale, brings profits, and has happy employees. Unlike facilities that rely on conveyor belts for efficiency, See & Be Kitchen focuses on filling a niche in the market without compromising the artisanal values that define its products.
Product that sells itself
Award-winning sourdough breads and croissants perfected through years of production and acclaimed at the International Bread Expo. Nearly zero churn with long-term wholesale business partners.
Intentional Product & Brand
With our Bakery School onboarding for new franchisees and recipes ready-to-go in our proprietary bakery software platform, we supercharge the learning and scaling of wholesale bread production, crafting a business with the bakers' needs at its core.
Innovation in the Baking Industry
Revolutionizing the bakery sector by redefining the bakers' schedules, direct-to-business sales model, and trade-secret products that are as consistent as they are delicious. All with no preservatives, dough conditioners, fancy expensive equipment, and low overhead.
Intelligent Business Structure & Support
Intelligent business structure minimizes waste while maximizing profitability. Our comprehensive playbook focuses on community outreach—engaging with farmers' markets, maker markets, and restaurants in the first year and pitching to chefs to secure long-term unique accounts for wholesale production.
Thriving Staff
We foster a thriving staff by creating a desirable workplace that avoids overwork, encourages labor training for our industrial athletes, embodies community, and redefines the narrative of overworked bakers. We treat our staff humanely and address challenges through thoughtful people-first HR and design.
Production Scale
Our production scale is optimized to rapidly grow as your business expands, blending industrial efficiencies with true artisan quality to create a product that is widely recognized and carries a prestigious brand equity.
A look inside a baking class
They said about us
Franchise reviews
Add a reviewAre you a franchisee?
Add your review now.
Franchisee Requirements for See & Be Kitchen
Here is what we are looking for in our operators
Active Operator
We are looking for professional barkers or people who love baking.
Single Location
See & Be Kitchen exclusively grants rights to a single territory. No multi-unit opportunities are available at this time.
Access to Capital
See & Be Kitchen franchise has attainable startup costs and special agreements for lease-to-own for the required baking equipment
Franchise Disclosure Documents
No FDDs listed.Contact us to get help.
How much will it cost
- $35,000
- 5.5%
This page is maintained by Wefranch and is not affiliated with the See and Be Kitchen concept.
Chrissy is a Chef with food-based business experience and her husband and partner Ben is an amazing Baker, having worked at some of the most prestigious places in New York City, including Bien Cuit, The Dutch, Saraghina, MaPeche, and Corton. We talk about their decision to leave the city behind and build a farm bakery in the Catskills, the joys and hurdles of running your own business and we try to figure out which ...
Chrissy and Ben Traore met while working in a New York City restaurant. Soon, they were commuting upstate on weekends for a cooking gig. To their great surprise, they began dreading going back to Brooklyn during the week. “We’ve always worked 70 to 100 hours a week,” Chrissy said. “And the city and the expenses just added stress to all of that.” Something had to give. So, by 2017, they settled in Cairo, a small, rural town in Greene County, about ten miles outside of Catskill.
Chrissy and Ben Salif Traore’s bakery was just hitting its stride when the pandemic forced them to hit pause. The one-year-old business had become a kind of community hub for locals, who regularly packed into the store for bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches; almond croissants; and meat pies spiced with a peanut-y “Kan kan kan” sauce that brings Salif Traore back to his childhood home in Burkina Faso. The Brooklyn transplants and new parents weren’t going to let See and Be go belly up, especially not when they have been so deeply committed to supporting local nonprofits like the Greene County food bank. In the last year, through the store’s online Second Serving donation program, See and Be has raised $3,000 to feed 50 families. The couple (whose backgrounds include stints at Roberta’s, Bien Cuit, Pizza Moto, and The Dutch) have also helped their bakery stay afloat by offering to-go orders and supplying product to nearby farms and restaurants like Phoenicia Diner and Dixon Roadside in Woodstock. See and Be has also been collaborating with Black-owned pop-ups such as Alima’s West African Cuisine food truck and Hyphen Foods, where you can find chef Bruce Bryant slinging kimchi grilled cheese on See and Be’s delicious Arborio bread.
Join Steve Barnes for a conversation with Ben and Chrissy Traore, a Brooklyn couple who moved up to the Catskills and opened a bakery-cafe called See and Be Kitchen in Cairo. Table Hopping is a weekly live conversation with local restaurateurs, chefs, and other players in the Capital Region dining scene.
In the latest Hudson Valley Word of Mouth segment, Julia Joern visits with Chrissy Traore and Ben Salif Traore, owners of See and Be Kitchen, located on Route 145, just north of downtown Cairo and heading toward East Durham. Chrissy hails from Florida, and is of Italian ancestry (with family in Long Island). Ben is originally from Burkina Faso, a West African country. Together they have married their different traditions and cultures — and love of baking — to put down roots, make a home, and establish a business here in Greene County. Stop by their place for delicious croissants, pizza, and other rustic offerings created both from inside their shipping-container bakery and outside in a giant wood-fired oven. Or find signature items, like their onion focaccia and arborio bread, at specialty shops and farmer's markets throughout the county and beyond.
See and Be Kitchen: A Catskills Bakery Built on Love
See and Be Kitchen Is a Bread-Filled Wonderland in the Hudson Valley
Couple behind See and Be Kitchen aim to make local connections: She’s a Long Island girl with Italian roots. He hails from Burkina Faso, a West African country. Together, the flavors they create in their Greene County bakery — See and Be Kitchen — bridge their cultures, but the genre was nameless. Or rather, the name for the genre had yet to exist, until Chrissy Traore and Ben Salif Traore invented one themselves: Ita-frique.