How to Skip the Cronut Line

There are those things we eat, make, read, and gush over that are just too good to keep to ourselves. Here, we resist the urge to use too many exclamation points and let you in on our latest crushes.

Today: Frequent Cronut breakfasts are not only wonderful, but totally doable. Here's how to skip the Cronut line at Dominique Ansel Bakery without breaking any rules.

Since January, I've eaten Cronuts every month because:

1. They're delicious (hype and all).
2. A flaky, creamy Cronut makes Monday morning coffee infinitely better.
3. Cruising past the Cronut line makes me feel unreasonably powerful. In the words of my boyfriend, "People in line think you're either royalty, super special, or a magician."

Plus, it's easy. All it takes is fast internet and a little bit of patience. But when I moved to New York last year, my Cronut-related dreams were humble: I just wanted one bite of the flaky croissant-donut hybrid of mythic proportions. So, as with other irrational obsessions that pop into my head (the sold-out-everywhere green dress of 2011; an affordable Manhattan apartment), I formulated a game plan.

After interviewing several Cronut Line Survivor (C.L.S.) friends, I created a Cronut-guaranteed plan of action that consisted of me heading to the House of Cronut (known to some as Dominique Ansel Bakery) before dawn on a rainy weekday morning. While a beautiful day is not the day to go, the line will still be really long (but not this long). I even poked around their website, researching, and learned some interesting things, like that there are age qualifications for purchasing this delicacy: "Our rule in terms of age cut off is that if someone is old enough to eat pastry, they are free to purchase the pastry."

But before my master plan could ever come to fruition, my boyfriend came home one January evening with a box of six Cronuts. Six! This completely defied all Cronut logic: Not only had he arrived with four more than the allotted two per person, but he had slept in till noon (not exactly the stuff of strategic Cronut planning). His trick was simple: He'd ordered them online. How, in my endless Cronut plotting, I'd missed the fact that Cronuts are available for preorder, I don't know. But with this insight, I've become a Frequent Cronut Consumer (F.C.C.).

Here's how to skip the Cronut line:

1. Just before 11 A.M. on the Monday two weeks before you want Cronuts, go to Cronutpreorder.com. The website will have an embedded tweet from Dominique Ansel announcing the flavor of the month. (The Cronut flavor changes every month. The last few months have included: Caramelized Malt Valrhona Milk Chocolate with Maldon Salt, Cherry Blossom, Strawberry Rhubarb and Thyme, Sweet Clementine Ricotta, and Key Lime and Young Coconut with Honey-Biscuit Sugar.)
2. At 11 A.M. sharp, refresh the page. Because you are not the only Cronut hopeful, the site will move slowly. Stick with it. Refresh the page a few times until you land on a screen with instructions. Scroll down.
3. Pick the day you'd like to pick up Cronuts. You can pick from any day of the week that's two weeks from when you're ordering. Choose the quanity of Cronuts you would like (between one and six), then select a pick-up time (which can be any hour of the day including 8 A.M., which is before the Cronut line is allowed to start buying). Write your pick-up time down! It will not appear anywhere else on the site.
4. Around this point, the website might glitch again, but as long as you've selected your pick-up time, you should be good to go. Be patient.
5. Once the website recovers, a PayPal link will appear, which will bring you to a separate PayPal page to enter your payment information (it's five dollars plus tax per Cronut).
6. Arrive at Dominique Ansel Bakery at your pick-up time (it's okay if you're a few minutes late). Walk straight past that Cronut line, and even skip the line inside the bakery! Go straight to the cashier and tell them you've arrived to claim your Cronuts. They'll check your name on the list and shout back to the rest of the counter staff, "Cronuts, please!" Avoid eye contact with all the jealous people in the bakery—or bask in it.
7. Receive your Cronuts and walk gleefully down the street with your bright orange bag of pastry sorcery. 

Do you just want to talk all day about Cronuts? Tell us in the comments below!

Photos by Mark Weinberg