"Customers are the most important people in our company, not me!"
"Your journalist Julie came to visit us in Asnières purely out of discovery. She did an article on the brunch, which she seems to have enjoyed! (laughs). The impact of the Sortir à Paris article has had a major effect on brunch in the Asnières store, where we've had a lot of requests for weekend bookings. For us, brunch means cosy places: on Sundays, we wake up as a family, we want to feel like we're at home, so we can come in our pyjamas! (laughs.) "
Carlos, what is the spirit of Maison Marques, which bears your name, in a few words?
"My parents were custodians at Dalloyau, so I've always grown up in the pastry business. When I was a kid, I used to go and help them with the pastry-making during the school vacations. I did my apprenticeship in Courbevoie with a Dalloyau chef. Then I was desperate to learn alongside the best, in this case the meilleurs Ouvriers de France. I did end up working for a meilleur ouvrier de France pâtissier, but in Belgium! A second chef there was France's best ice-cream maker. I stayed there for ten years.
"After that, I did some relay desserts, in Luxembourg, which were quite well known, then in England. I finally came back to the Paris region, to open Maison Marques in Normandy. I always wanted to work with great chefs and Maisons where I learned a lot, even if it was very hard.
"My first bakery was in Normandy in 2005, we started as a twosome with Kathy, my partner, and we spent 7 years there. We sold up and moved back to Paris. We looked for nice places, but we couldn't really get into the inner city at the time. So, in 2012 we bought in Asnières, then expanded into the 17th arrondissement, and last year into Rueil-Malmaison. We've also had a central lab in Gennevilliers for the past 2 years. All our pastries and viennoiseries are made there. In stores, we produce snacks, sandwiches and all baked goods. A truck leaves every morning from the lab, where it's delivered raw, we put it in the growth chamber and bake it the next day."
A diversified bakery-pastry business, with boutiques at its heart
"When everything was produced in Asnières, it was really problematic regarding the space available: we were in just over 30m2, whereas we have a lot of production volumes. Over the past two years, we've moved to a 400m2 Lab, K also works with the various cafés and restaurants where we make certain products, and with chefs to produce desserts."
"Our priority has always been the stores, because that's our name! We've had these side projects through acquaintances, what started out as troubleshooting actually allows us to always question ourselves on our products and move forward. That's why these related projects are important, we work on new products, new features, being really square on everything."
Once a Parisian, always a Parisian
"Paris is still Paris, it's the city where there's everything! I love Paris, but Normandy didn't take us long to get around to it. We had an exclusivity zone of 30km around the store. I'm originally from Paris, so I wanted to come back there, which is why we looked in Paris."
"Today's bakery is really taking a turn for the better, and you have to question yourself. People come to you and need real service, and I want them to feel at home, enjoying pastries in a cosy, comfortable place. Upstairs in Paris, it's complicated, but the stores in Asnières and Rueil-Malmaison are there to get more seats."
Create tea rooms, expand
"We redid the store in Paris 3 or 4 years ago, it was "a toilet corridor" (laughs). A shoe store wanted to sell, so we negotiated at length, broke up and remade the two stores into one. It's the same in Asnières, where we bought a dentist's doorstep above it, and in Rueil, an apartment to create the catering facilities, in order to develop everything in the same place."
"The tea room is very different in terms of service and organization. We've launched brunch and we work with chefs for big names on the menu too. For coffee, we train our teams at Richard's. Making a good coffee is difficult! You have to learn how to make a good coffee, the grammage, how to maintain the machine. You discover the importance of every detail as you go along."
.. For a varied clientele
"We don't just have one kind of customer. In my career I also ran a brasserie on Rue Mogador in 2014, and there it was really touristy in terms of clientele. Today, our stores cater for everything: residential, office and tourism. In Asnières, for example, we didn't think about it, but there are a lot of tourists! We're 10 minutes by public transport from St-Lazare. Rueil is an imperial town linked to Napoleon, so it's also a tourist destination. So we really have all three clienteles, even if our biggest one is probably the residents."
Local partners and suppliers
"It's very important to me that most of our raw materials are French: the butter is Isigny PDO, we work in Vendée or Normandy, with distributors in the Paris region. Our Italian products, like mozzarella, are sourced in Italy. Our miller is in the Paris region. We try to work with local products or specialists, as we do for our Italian products.
"For me, quality is paramount, customers are super careful. We can't put out products that aren't quality, there's no point: customers are the most important people with us, not me!"
The teams, a large family of 90 employees
"We have store managers, people who have been with us for years. In the laboratory, our head of production, Willy, has been a friend of ours for several years too, and has worked in some very fine houses, at Ladurée, Alain Ducasse and the Boulangerie Utopie on rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. We're very close to the teams, and I spend every day in the stores and in the laboratory."
Meeting with Sortir à Paris
"Your journalist Julie came to visit us in Asnières purely out of discovery. She did an article on the brunch, which she seems to have enjoyed! (laughs). The impact of the Sortir à Paris article had a similar effect on brunch, where we had a lot of requests for weekend bookings. For us, brunch means cosy places: on Sundays, you wake up with your family, you want to feel at home, you want to come in your pyjamas! (laughs.) Our savory offering includes the four plates we serve at the table, for which we work with organic eggs and fresh produce, quiche and fromage blanc. We change with the seasons. In the sweet department, we offer mini viennoiseries, madeleines, cookies and mini marble cakes. Our aim is to make sure that everything is complete, and that people can also take their pastries home if they haven't finished..."
A reputation for quality built on word-of-mouth and a few flagship products
"With our puff pastry brioche, we won a competition. I had no idea! In our store in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, we didn't sell many of them, but the week before we won the prize, I told the teams to stop and throw half of them away, it was useless. I didn't know our brioche was in the running. And then, when we won the prize, the teams called me and told me that we'd just asked them for the brioche! So we did it again."
In terms of communication, we've been buying a presence in certain guidebooks for the past 7 years as a matter of habit, and we also form partnerships with micro-influencers. Sortir à Paris is one of the few well-known media outlets to have done this without asking for anything: your journalist paid for his brunch, and we didn't find out about your article until later!
The impact of the Sortir à Paris article had a similar effect on the brunch to the contest we won, that's for sure! Thanks to you, we've had a huge number of requests for bookings for the weekend in Asnières, the location of your test.
And for the rest...
We're planning to open one or two more boutiques, again in the West, depending on available market locations, to recoup the investment in our lab. For the Olympic Games, we'll be there with impeccable service!
Discover the original Sortir à Paris articleMaison Marques at Asnières-sur-Seine, all-you-can-eat gourmet brunch near Bois-Colombes station (92)
Enjoy a unique brunch at Maison Marques in Asnières: an all-you-can-eat artisanal sweet and savoury buffet for a perfect Sunday. [Read more]
Maison Marques at Asnières-sur-Seine, all-you-can-eat gourmet brunch near Bois-Colombes station (92)
