The croissant is one of Europe’s most loved products. The two fats that make it possible, butter and palm margarine, are both under serious pressure. There is a better way to make it.
Every morning, millions of croissants, pain au chocolat, pains aux raisins, cinnamon rolls, and filled puff pastries come out of industrial ovens across Europe and end up on the shelves of supermarkets, the counters of coffee shops, the breakfast tables of hotels and the trays of airline caterers.
The global croissant market alone was valued at over $7 billion in 2024. Europe accounts for nearly half of all consumption. Viennoiserie. croissants, pain au chocolat, Danish pastries, brioche. makes up 63% of the frozen pastry market. These are not niche products. They are the backbone of industrial baking.
And they are all built on one of two fats. Butter; expensive, volatile, dairy-heavy. Or palm margarine; cheap, functional yet harmful to brand’s reputation and a business’s compliance position.
Both of those options have a problem. And large producers are feeling it.
The product the world loves
The croissant has gone global. What started as a French staple is now a daily item in coffee shops from Amsterdam to Seoul. Filled croissants with chocolate, almond or pistachio have seen over 30% growth in popularity in Europe and North America. Pain au chocolat is the second most popular breakfast pastry in France. Cinnamon rolls are a $2 billion category on their own.
The cafe and coffee shop segment accounts for over 40% of croissant sales. Retail supermarkets contribute nearly 50% of total market volume. And the frozen format, bake-off croissants, puff pastry plates, laminated dough, is the fastest-growing segment, up 30% globally since 2020.
Demand is not the problem. The problem is what sits inside the product.
Butter: The premium option with a price
Butter makes the best croissant. Any serious baker knows this. The flavour, the layers, the sheen, the melt, butter delivers all of it. And for products where the fat IS the flavour, classic plain croissants, butter-forward viennoiserie, there is no argument for switching.
But butter is expensive, volatile, and increasingly complicated. In 2024, European butter hit a record high of $8,706 per tonne, up 83% year-on-year. It has since pulled back, but J.P. Morgan still forecasts butter at structurally higher levels for years. Dairy markets do not deliver the stable pricing that industrial production lines require.
Beyond price, butter is dairy. That means lactose. That means allergen declarations, cross-contamination protocols, HACCP complexity. It means a product that a growing share of consumers, lactose intolerant, dairy-free, allergen-aware, cannot eat without a different SKU or a workaround.
And on Scope 3: dairy butter carries a lifecycle carbon footprint of roughly 12–13 kg of CO₂ per kilogram. At industrial production scale, that is a significant number and one that is increasingly landing in procurement conversations with major retail and foodservice clients.
▌ Keep butter where butter belongs: in products where the fat is the flavour. But for everything else, it is carrying costs that the product does not need.
Palm-margarine: The fat producers like to hide
Palm-based margarine has been the industrial default for decades. It is cheap. It is stable. It works on the big lines, French method lamination, high-speed folding. It delivers consistent layers, predictable yield, reliable shelf life. From a pure production standpoint, it has been the pragmatic choice.
But it is the fat that nobody wants to talk about.
Walk into any supermarket and read the ingredient list on an industrial croissant. Somewhere in the fine print: palm oil. Or ‘vegetable fat.’ Or ‘modified vegetable fat.’ The language is careful. The reason is clear. Palm is associated with deforestation, orangutan habitat destruction, and greenwashing and consumers increasingly know it.
Now add the regulatory dimension. The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) with a compliance deadline of December 2026 for large operators lists palm oil as a high-risk commodity. That means farm-level traceability, due diligence statements, geolocation data for every plantation in the supply chain. For producers running on palm-based margarine at scale, this is not a future consideration. It is an active compliance project with a hard deadline.
And then there is the flavour question. Palm margarine carries what bakers call a ‘fat filter’, a slight coating, a heaviness on the palate, a flavour interference that leaves an unsatisfying taste experience.
▌ Palm margarine costs less. But it is costing more every year, in brand reputation, in compliance overhead, in the gap between what the product could taste like and what it actually does.
The numbers
$7.4bn Global croissant market 2024 — Europe ~45% of global consumption
63% Frozen pastry market share — Viennoiserie: croissants, pain au choc, brioche, Danish
+30% Filled croissant growth — Europe & North America, last 3 years
83% YoY European butter price surge, 2024 — Record $8,706/tonne by year end
Dec 2026 EUDR deadline for large operators — Palm oil: full farm-level traceability required
12–13 kg CO₂/kg Dairy butter lifecycle footprint — vs. 2.44 kg for Be Better Puff Block
A third option: Built for what both of them cannot do
Be Better My Friend started with one question: what would a fat look like if you designed it from scratch for modern industrial pastry, not for the market of 1990, but for the kitchen, the regulation, and the consumer of 2026?
The Be Better Puff Pastry Block is an 80% fat, 100% plant-based lamination block built and validated for industrial production. Tested on AMF Bakery Systems lines using the French method. Validated for croissants at 16–36 layers with full lift and texture. Validated on 100-layer puff pastry plates. Higher workability tolerance than conventional alternatives, with no fat-layering issues on the line.
This is not a product designed for artisan kitchens. It is designed for the machines that produce viennoiserie at scale and it performs on them.
The fat profile is built from shea and sunflower. No palm, no hydrogenated fats, no artificial colours or flavours. The result is a genuinely neutral fat that carries the chocolate in a pain au chocolat, the fruit in a filled puff, the spice in a cinnamon roll, without adding a fat filter. The core ingredient is the hero. The fat gets out of the way.
▌ Keep producing your butter croissant. Use Be Better where fat is functional, in filled products, fermented doughs, panettone, buns, rolls, puff applications where the core ingredient should lead.
Solving the real problems
On allergens and HACCP: the Puff Block is lactose-free and allergen-free by default. One fat across multiple product lines means simpler cross-contamination management, less labelling complexity, and a cleaner HACCP process. That simplification, at production scale, has real operational value.
On EUDR: the product is palm-free by design, not as a retrofit, but as a founding product decision. There is no deforestation-linked commodity in the supply chain. No due diligence statement to file for palm. No geolocation data to gather. The compliance burden that every palm-margarine user is actively managing is simply absent.
On Scope 3: Be Better’s environmental impact is independently validated by Eaternity across the full lifecycle; ingredients, energy, transport, packaging, from seed to kitchen. The Puff Block delivers 81% less CO₂ than dairy butter, and 70% less water. These are auditable numbers, not marketing claims, for direct use in ESG reporting and supplier sustainability disclosures.
On Nutri-Score: with 30g of saturated fat per 100g. significantly lower than dairy butter. the Puff Block has the potential to improve a product’s Nutri-Score to a C or B, depending on the full recipe. That matters commercially. A Nutri-Score B or C opens distribution channels that are currently closed: schools, hospitals, health-focused retail segments. Intentional indulgence; more real, more transparent, lower in the things that should not be there is the direction the market is moving.
The era of intentional indulgence
Something is shifting in what consumers expect from the food they choose to enjoy. They still want the croissant. They still want the pain au chocolat. They are not asking for less indulgence, they are asking for more integrity in how that indulgence is made.
Fewer additives. No hidden palm. No unnecessary emulsifiers, sugar or salt. Transparent ingredients. Real flavour from real sources. Lower saturated fat without sacrificing texture. This is not a health food trend. It is a quality trend. And it is arriving in industrial pastry whether industrial pastry is ready for it or not.
Be Better Puff Pastry Block is not a compromise on performance. It is validated on the same machines, running the same processes, producing the same layers. But it is built for the product standard that the next decade will demand. Not the one the last decade settled for.
Butter for tradition. Be Better for progress. Both in the same bakery.
Want to test a palm free plant butter block on your line?
Email joost@bebettermyfriend.com for a starter kit and application guidance for croissant pain au chocolat and puff pastry
