Discover the story (and secret recipe) behind the fantastic success of this establishment, which can accumulate over an hour's queue for its homemade weekend brunch, priced at just 22 euros (over 300 served each weekend). A few instructions for preparation: adapt to each type of customer, with fresh, quality products, dishes and cakes reduced in sugar and fat (replaced by grapeseed oil for the sugar, or pumpkin for the butter) and then keep your customers waiting with tea and coffee served in the queue. You've got the formula for L'Escarpolette's success: homemade, fresh, affordable and hearty!
As it happens, during our journalist's visit, the managers of l'Escarpolette had different types of experience with other types of media, guides or even influencers: "a lot of small influencers came through (@hungryconsti), one of the few who did an incredible job like Sortir à Paris".
"On the other hand, it went much less well with other influencers, who communicated the wrong information: on price, presentation, formulas. Yet it's clear and concise... Others were outright asking us to pay them to come to the restaurant and create content, in addition to inviting them for the meal of course."
Yella adds:
"A famous gastronomic guide, which has been around for over 50 years, charges around 7,000 euros for the service. Another local media, present on the Internet and printed in shops, charges around 3,500 euros for a fake publication. It was thanks to Sortir à Paris that I discovered I didn't need to pay to talk to a journalist!
The genesis of l'Escarpolette: a family affair, homemade with love, fresh and accessible to all
"My mother and I weren't in the profession: she was coordinating service provision on companies' worksites on the logistics side, and I had a legal training, I was working in a company. She couldn't stand running around any more, so she said
why not start a restaurant!"
Yella's grandfather, Dalila's father, was himself a baker. So, she explains, her mom, among 8 brothers and sisters, probably wanted to pay tribute to him too, by opening her tea room: "she's happy to please people, as she does at home, in quantity, to continue passing on mom's little touch, which she had with her pastry chef and baker father."
"Even if working as a family isn't always easy, because we have the same character and we both want to be right. I know I'm the only one of the siblings who's in the restaurant here, so I support her, and I also have my partner's, who's a restaurant chef with ten years' experience in a brasserie in Paris. He gave us a hand with the concept and the business plan, and the two of us launched it."
Step 1: Choose a lively neighborhood, from regular residents to tourists
"When it came to choosing a neighborhood, we knew the Rue Gay-Lussac very well, as we live a 5-minute walk away, on the border of the 13th and 5th arrondissements, towards Les Gobelins." For mother and daughter, this is not just another Parisian neighborhood, more like a village, where everyone knows everyone else. "When we moved in, everyone came to say hello, to make the first symbolic purchase, we go to the restaurant across the street, they come..."
L'Escarpolette's regulars are residents and office workers, who account for 60-70% of the clientele. The nearby CNRS with its 3,000 employees, the Institut Pierre et Marie Curie, as well as universities, business schools and engineering schools, make up the weekly clientele, for lunch on site or ordered in advance.
"Then there's tourism all year round, with brunch and breakfast service in the mornings. And once again, Yella notes the impact of Sortir à Paris, thanks to the article's translation into 28 languages: " I've had tourists come in with the Sortir à Paris article, to tell you just how important it is !I even had a reservation from Americans, months in advance for 19 people, one person and his family who were coming on a trip from the States, for the first time in Paris: one place they wanted to discover was L'Escarpolette."
Main ingredient: people!
Beyond the unbeatable prices, the most important thing for the mother-daughter duo "is the quality, the feeling of being at home and really the human relationship." Yella recounts this rather exceptional anecdote: "It was my birthday, and some customers came on purpose, with a bouquet of flowers: it was never my original plan, but the encounters I have here are something that exists less and less for the proximity of shopkeepers to customers, and here everyone knows each other".
"I didn't expect it to be so, it was something we wanted to cultivate, we try to interact with everyone."
So much so, in fact, that L'Escarpolette is unable to take reservations at weekends (30 seats in the dining room, with several services in a row): "We take reservations during the week, but at weekends, it's not certain that people will come; we can't afford to block a table. Last weekend, it was cold, and despite the cold, people waited, so we gave out tea and hot chocolate." People are there come rain or shine! And they're all regulars in the queue: they've tasted, adopted, loved and they're coming back... You couldn't ask for a better clientele.
For Yella, the spirit of l'Escarpolette has been built on encounters and feelings, certainly with a warm, homemade, family feel, but she points out that"people have also contributed a lot to creating the spirit of l'Escarpolette, the magic recipe".
Adding a strong link with the neighborhood, based on personal tastes
We also have a catering service, but once again this has developed by word of mouth only, no communication on that: at Lariboisière, regulars, we delivered an end-of-year buffet to them, for example, but what incredible luck we had because apart from the article in Sortir à Paris, we didn't communicate!"
The suppliers are also local or nearby: "My coffee roaster is 5 minutes away, I knew him personally because I used to drink coffee, and so for the choice of l'Escarpolette, it was my own taste that guided the search"; But tests were also carried out with customers: I had three coffee suppliers taste: Loutsa, Coutumes, Substances... and people preferred
Loutsa next door. It was important to me that it be close by."
"We do that with the butcher's shop too, same next door, spirits is La Cave du Panthéon in the neighborhood, and for tea in the 15th arrondissement. "Our success is based on our tastes in simple reflections, a fixed menu, and a daily menu that changes with our moods and desires in the morning, when we arrive".
And the rest of the recipe...
"We're looking to recruit new staff and reinforce our weekend service with 2 people. I was doing it alone the first weekend after Sortir à Paris came through, so it was impossible! On Sundays, we do up to 120 brunches, so 300 brunches a weekend.
We've got a bit of help, but in the kitchen I need to quickly recruit someone who fits in with what we're doing, who's keen and understands the project."
The project in a nutshell: "In other words, even if the product is expensive, we can manage, we can push for a satisfactory result for the customer, that's the main thing. When we've had a customer cry in front of our scrambled eggs, describing a leap back into childhood, or a gentleman who comes especially for these scrambled eggs too, we want to keep that level of value for money."
"Customers tell us every day to raise prices, we feel the price rise on what we buy, but we're within our costs for the moment on formulas, so we're not considering it just yet. But when it comes to the customers themselves, we wonder about it, especially when we see the prices charged elsewhere."
"But our ingredients for success are homemade, quality, accessible to everyone, and then the relational and human aspect for a complete experience: good coffee, a good smile, a chat. And if there's a queue, a Thermos of hot drinks for people to wait in. In fact, I do exactly how I'd like to be treated as a customer, and I give as much attention in the queue as I do to my customers in the dining room."
Yella and her mom Dalila sum it up very well, what makes the difference is the human relationship."
Discover the original article by the Editor of Sortir à Paris
L'Escarpolette, the coffee shop with crazy cheap tea times
L'Escarpolette, the coffee shop with crazy cheap tea times
