Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Julien RENAUT. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Julien, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
There is a lot of coffee shop in Colorado and they all struggled with their bakery supplier so I create a process that give them a lot of flexibility and a very high quality pastry to match their quality coffee. Back then, I already had over 12 years of experience in the industry so I knew that I could create the business model we have now.
As soon as I started to prospect and meet business owner, I knew that I had something good going on and the feedback were amazing. 6 years later, our customers still back up that our model works.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am Julien Renaut and I am the Founder / CEO of La Belle French Bakery. We wholesale pastries in over 100 miles radius of our warehouse and have a small retail in the back of our building. We are also opening a new retail location in DTC early summer 2022.
We make our pastries exactly like in France. In fact, I am still using the same recipe of when I lived in France.
We are known for our laminated pastries and we make specials every weekend.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
I started the business with 10k.
I had to be creative in order to make the business successful and I reinvested every dollars earned for a long time.
Still today, We are reinvesting everything we are making to continue the growth of the business.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
When COVID-19 shutdown happened, we decided to stay open and started to sell to the public so we could keep our staff on payroll. We set up camping table in the back of our warehouse overnight and communicate to the public that we are going to sell directly to the customer on top of the wholesale. It actually worked and because of the community support, we were able to keep all our staff through that time. It was very hard but we made it and continue to thrive both in wholesale and retail
Contact Info:
- Website: www.labellefrenchbakery.com
- Instagram: labellefrenchbakery
- Facebook: labellefrenchbakery