San Francisco collectively threw a tantrum last year when Starbucks announced that it would close all La Boulange locations and dissolve the brand. Luckily, though, founder Pascal Rigo came to the rescue, reopening five of the stores under the name La Boulangerie de San Francisco, and bringing back the same beloved almond croissants, cereal bowl-sized lattes, tartines, breads, and more.
That was all over a year ago, and now the brand has settled into its triumphant return, with two more SF locations on the way and national accounts like Trader Joe’s and Costco. Pascal and co-owner Nicolas Bernadi are tapping into the infrastructure they developed with Starbucks to provide thousands upon thousands of items to accounts across the country.
They’re utilizing a 40,000-square-foot factory in South San Francisco that they reopened in January to make it all happen, which has three distinct departments (bread, viennoiserie, and pastry) and 50 people working 24 hours a day. The end result is crazy production numbers like 20,000 croissants, 10,000 loaves of organic baguettes, ciabatta, and other bread, and well over 10,000 various pastries, among other items — every single day. Here’s a look inside how it all works and what’s to come for the brand.
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