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The world’s finest croissant shop gives its customers a clear view of what goes into making each and every flaky masterpiece.

The inspiration behind Lune Croissanterie was pastry, of course, but also outer space. The pairing may seem unlikely, but Kate Reid, founder of the wildly popular Melbourne bakery, was formerly an aerospace engineer, so it seemed only natural to name her shop after the moon, and to play up a galactic theme with clever graphics. Reid and her brother, Cameron, who is also a pastry chef, had an idea to create a unique retail experience by letting customers get a clear view of making, laminating, and shaping the dough as it happens, and to a build a kitchen devoted to one purpose: creating the perfect croissant.

“We put the highest quality into our workmanship, and we want anyone who might be skeptical to be able to see the fastidiousness of what we do,” says Cameron. “There is 360-degree customer access. We’ve got nothing to hide.”

The climate-controlled raw pastry kitchen is visible to customers, who can watch the mastery at work from all angles.

To realize their goals, the Reids recruited Felicity Slattery and Sarah Cosentino from local firm Studio Esteta to design a climate-controlled raw pastry kitchen encased in glass. Dubbed “the cube,” it sits inside a crumbling brick building with open space all around it. “Too often, the design of interiors can be over embellished,” says Slattery. “With Lune Croissanterie, we reinvigorated the rough and raw with quite minimalistic gestures.” In addition to the kitchen, the Reid siblings added countertops, islands and box-shaped stools – all made of concrete. The stools sit in front of wall-mounted wooden benches and double as small tables.

Lune Croissanterie by Melbourne firm Studio Esteta.

The other key design feature is the lighting. In a playful reference to sci-fi depictions of spaceships going into hyperdrive, more than a dozen LED strips radiate outward from the centre of the cube’s ceiling. The burst pattern is also picked up in the bakery’s packaging, designed by local branding studio A Friend of Mine. Lines are cut from the box lid, creating a climate-controlled environment for keeping hot croissants fresh.

The shop is set inside a 100-year-old warehouse.

Cameron, though, has another rationale for those ventilation holes: “We thought, what if you were a miniature person and you were inside the box and looked up – what would you see?” Sometimes, thoughts that seem more whimsical than real can be just what gives the ordinary its awe and wonder. The formula seems to be working, with customers happy to line up for hours just to get their buttery morning fix, and with The New York Times Style Magazine suggesting, earlier this year, that Lune might very well be making the best croissants in the world.

Lune Croissanterie is located at 119 Rose St., Fitzroy, Melbourne

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