× Expand Photography by Kevin A. Roberts

In the fourth grade, Russell Ping sold cookies at the neighborhood pool. At 22, he opened Russell’s Café & Bakery in Fenton, and he’ll soon open his third café/bakery, in Chesterfield. Next, the 33-year-old plans to open a pizza joint, Lola Jean’s Pizza, named after his daughter, near the Russell’s location in Southampton. “It’s not a huge stretch,” says the career baker.

When did you decide to get into the business? When other kids were asking for Nintendos for Christmas, I wanted a KitchenAid mixer. To me, that was a primo gift. I thought being able to actually sell chocolate chip cookies at the local pool was pretty cool.

Were you cutting the dough off a roll? No, no. My recipe.

Did you ever travel to increase your culinary knowledge? Not really. I started in the business so early—age 22—that it put a damper on the whole go-backpacking-and-staging-through-Europe-in-my-early-20s thing. I guess I’ll save that for my 40s. I do love to travel, and most of my memories are tied to food, like peanut butter and boysenberry jam sandwiches at the beach with my grandparents when I was young, or the insane fried oyster sandwich that my wife and I recently had at Cochon in New Orleans. Everything always comes back to food, and those memories influence my cooking. To me, that’s what hospitality is all about: I hope people leave one of my places, and the food sticks in their mind.

Do you have a mentor? Not really, but I did have an instructor in culinary school who said two great things: "Sometimes it’s the driver and not the car"—as in, if you screw something up, it’s not the oven’s fault; and "Try everything once—never turn any food down. Then remember that what you crave when you wake up in the middle of the night is what you should be cooking."

How did the first Russell’s come about? My dad is a business owner, and I’d always knocked around business ideas with him. I was unsatisfied with my late-night line-cook job, and the company that my mom had been working with for 20 years went out of business. I had always wanted to open a place that was accessible, warm, and friendly to everyone but with the same standards of fine dining that I was taught from my previous jobs. One night, my dad suggested that my mom and I start something together. My mom and I put together a business plan to open a 16-seat restaurant and bakery on a shoestring budget, where everything was cooked from scratch on two electric burners and one convection oven. We had no idea where it would go or what it would become.

What was your average day like? I’d get there at 3 in the morning and cook everything—all from scratch—plus do the dishes. After a long day, I remember reassuring my mom, "Someday we will be able to afford to have other people take out the trash."

Why Fenton? I went to Rockwood Summit High School, so Fenton was what we knew. It was home; it was cheap. We had moved into a tiny space with horrible visibility and traffic but had a good product and a great customer service background. We opened the doors in 2006 at a long time doughnut and pastry shop and crossed our fingers. I remember telling our first customer that our 9-inch round cake cost $35, and she nearly fainted. Eleven years later, we are a fixture there and would never move.

Talk about the expansion in Fenton. Another restaurant opened a few doors down, and I remember the owner of that company telling me, "Come down to my place once it’s done and see how a real restaurant works." We took over his space in 2011, taking us from 16 to more than 60 seats. But the real reason the expansion has been successful is people: Our core staff is like family, a family who really wants you to succeed.

When did you decide to do a second location? When my wife and I moved to the SOHA neighborhood, I knew I had to have a restaurant there. We’d frequent Murdoch Perk, and one day a For Sale sign appeared in the window. Even though we’d just expanded Fenton, I told the realtor that we were interested, having no idea how we were going to pay for it. Six months later, we owned the building—and I’m still not sure how we did it.

Did you know that SOHA was going to become a hot area? At the time, there was just The Mack and the deli, but the population was so dense that I saw nothing on that street but dollar signs.

What did you do differently in the second location? We had more room at Macklind, which gave us room to expand, first by adding brunch and dinner entrées, then moving from counter to full dinner service, which just seemed to work better for the space. We like the idea of opening multiple spots, each with their own feel and identity.

Then you opened on Macklind Avenue and expanded. Twice. First with a 30-seat deck, then adding an upstairs bar and dining room. When we added that room, we thought it would be an event space. It’s so busy everyday that we can’t even use it for its intended purpose.

Talk about the below-grade patio at Macklind. We all feel sorry for the servers who have to huff it from there to the second-floor bar and back, but they make it work and make it look effortless. Plus, everyone has great calves.

One of your signature items is a different take on gooey butter cake. When we opened, I didn’t care for gooey butter cake—I found it way too sweet. At the time, I was making pie bars, in sheet pans, using pie fillings and a shortbread crust that wasn’t very sweet. So we began experimenting, eventually selling every one we made. Today, it’s our best-selling bakery product.

What’s your most popular cake? The signature chocolate cake. It costs $45, but it weighs like 50 pounds. My favorite, though, is the lemon curd, which is just a layered buttermilk pound cake with fresh whipped cream, lemon curd, and vanilla buttercream. We also sell a ton of carrot cake, my grandma’s recipe.

How does the Chesterfield location differ from the other two? To us, it’s the perfect version of the breakfast and lunch café/bakery concept. The service is elevated fast-casual, which means floor personnel can add a dessert or take-home item at the table. At 4,000 square feet, it’s big enough to do anything we want, including fine-dining dinner service if the demand is there.

Is it hard to find qualified help? My full-time job has become skimming through resumes, 98 percent of which don’t pan out. Someone in St. Louis needs to start an effective job forum, something that vets people ahead of time.

Talk about Lola Jean’s. I’ve wanted to do a pizza place for a long time. When the Grapeseed space opened up, we couldn’t see it as anything else. Pizza is at the intersection of savory and baking. It’s not a huge stretch, but it is different. We added hand-churned ice cream to keep it from looking like another Italian-themed restaurant and to allow for flavors like Lemon Curd with Shortbread.

When will Lola Jean’s open? To start, we may do some ‘pop up and give back’ concepts in that space that wouldn’t interfere with the planning of Lola Jean’s, which we hope to open sometime in 2018.

Do you have any other concepts in mind? If I were to do anything else, I would focus on the bread component. We use Breadsmith’s bread now and love it, but at a certain number of stores it will make sense to do it ourselves, in a separate facility.

Is there a downside to having too many stores or concepts? I tend to think big, but sometimes that comes at a cost. A restaurant owner often gets more criticism the more places he has—’They expanded too fast,’ or ‘The quality slipped since they got bigger.’ Then there’s the ‘How many stores before you get called a chain?’ dilemma.

Could you ever picture yourself doing anything else? I would have been good at architecture, design, and planning—most likely of restaurants.