We recently connected with Liz Lanier and have shared our conversation below.

Liz, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

I dabbled in many potential business ideas before settling on baking and macarons. My first love was paper and I tried my hand at letterpress and bookmaking before realizing how much I loved to bake (side note: I have always enjoyed baking, but even more, I have always loved to eat sweets!). I started making macarons at home and got a great response when sharing them with friends and family. With their encouragement, I began to sell at farmers markets and through our website for local delivery. I had to find commercial kitchen space to make the macarons to sell at the markets, so I reached out to the amazing ladies of Emporium Pies and they rented me thier space. There was excitement and curiosity immediately.

We quickly started looking for retail spaces and did a pop-up at our current Davis Street location. It was such a great success, we decied to go for it and open the first JOY.

Macarons are so beautiful to look at and provide an endless range of flavor possibilities. I thought I could create an interesting retail experience by focusing exclusively on macarons and offering lots of different flavors in a fun environment. My goal was simply to make the first shop successful and bring JOY to my customers.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

JOY is constantly pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with macarons. Our kitchen team has an absolute blast experimenting with new flavor ideas. Ice cream and Macaron Ice Cream Sandwiches have been a fun addition to our menu and we are always thinking about what we can do next. We make twelve flavors of macarons and ice cream and usually have a flavor of the month. We make everything we can from scratch and everything we make is gluten free. Most importantly, we are passionate about quality and consistency. We want our customers to know that when they come to JOY, they will receive excellent service, fun flavors and quality ingredients

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Using quality ingredients, being creative and paying attention to every little detail. I always knew that aesthetics were a really important part of the business, I have always tried to include a few different and interesting design elements that we hope encourage customers to come in and spend some time. I didn’t want to JOY to look like other bakeries and we have always pushed our creative boundaries.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

My business partner/cofounder is my husband Jason. We met in middle school. We have always been good friends, but did not start dating until we were both in gratuate school in California. We bonded over food and wanting to business owners. We moved to Dallas to be closer to family while expecting our first kiddo. We now have three kids, three stores and love what we do!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.joymacarons.com
• Instagram: @joymacarons
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joymacarons

Image Credits
Esther Huynh