"Customers are the most important people here, 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 had a big effect on brunch in the Asnières store, where we 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, we can't 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 couple with Kathy, my partner, and we did 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 available space: we were in barely more than 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, which started out as troubleshooting actually allows us to always challenge 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 about everything."
Once a Parisian, always a Parisian
"Paris is still Paris, it's the city where everything is! I love Paris, but Normandy didn't take us long to get around, as we had a 30km zone of exclusivity around the store. I'm originally from Paris, so I wanted to come back there, which is why we looked in Paris."
"Today the bakery business is really turning a corner, and you have to question yourself. People come to you and need real service, I want them to feel at home, to enjoy pastries in a cocooned, comfortable place. In Paris, it's complicated on the upper floor, but the stores in Asnières and Rueil-Malmaison are there to provide more room."
Creating tea rooms, expanding
"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 for a long time, 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 dining rooms, so we could develop everything in the same place."
"The tearoom is a very different type 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. To make 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 have just 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 undoubtedly 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 essential, because customers are very careful. We can't put out products that aren't quality, there's no point: customers are the most important people here, not me!"
The teams, a big family of 90 employees
"We have managers for each store, 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, has done 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 wrote an article about 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, and you want to feel at home, so you might as well come in your pyjamas! (laughs.) Our savoury offer 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 established by 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 launched it again."
In terms of communication, we've been buying a presence in certain guides for the past 7 years out of habit, and we also do partnerships with micro-influencers. Sortir à Paris is one of the only well-known media outlets to have passed by 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. Thanks to you, we've had a huge number of requests for bookings for the weekend in Asnières, the location of your test.
And what's next?
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)
