Les Pépites de la Rédaction: Alfredine changes minds about gluten- and lactose-free cakes

"The name Healfy (brand name, ed. note) I chose for the health aspect: I don't emphasize that much, but it's the fact of completely reducing lactose and gluten that saved me, and that's what I want to promote. I wanted to bake cakes, help others and make people understand that we can change mentalities."

A very personal story of resilience and food

"I launched my brand on September 21, 2022, so it's been a year and four months. I'm based in St-Ouen with my lab, I don't have a sales location at the moment. It all started because I fell ill in January 2019. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis, an inflammatory joint disease. I'm affected by inflammatory flare-ups and have had great pain and deformity in my hands."

"Shortly after I met my partner in 2020, who was very focused on nutrition, I changed my diet, stopping lactose and gluten. That's when I saw real progress in the disease, and was able to stop my disease-modifying treatment, after two years of illness which will make three years in March. I had too many side-effects with my treatment, a "micro-chimio" to be taken on a daily basis, which destroys the liver as it goes along: since then, I've had the impression of getting my liver back. And then, with autoimmune diseases, you have to change your treatment methods every 5 or 10 years, because your body is too used to them. Once every two or three months, in half a day, we transfuse a product into your body.

"There, to cut out gluten and lactose, it was a personal choice, to at least try. It wasn't a recommendation from my rheumatologist, whom I spoke to about it, and who told me I could try to integrate the 50/50 treatment and diet. I didn't have the degenerative syndrome, so I didn't necessarily need a basic treatment, if it didn't progress too much... "

"And I thought, why not share my story because a lot of people can't find good gluten-free and lactose-free cakes - which are full of sugar and nothing else in them."

Best-sellers from Alfy's intuitive creativity

"Beyond the galette. The Best-Seller is the Amandier à la Frangipane, I leave it all year round but it doesn't have a cookie. It's a classic, with good success, which led me to develop the range from this recipe base - by making a collection a little more luxurious: with a lemon almond, which gives a lemon tart taste in the mouth. I developed the pistachio tree with pure pistachio, which pistachio lovers love.

I get lots of feedback, especially in the comments on my website below each cake. It's a much more practical tool than ordering by hand. It's my "right-hand man", my secretary, and it's hard to accept anything else through the website!

A career rich in experience, always with pastry-making as a passion in the background

"I was born in Amiens and lived next door. I went to the Lycée Hôtelier in Amiens, where I took a baccalaureate in hotel management, catering and service: kitchen, dining room and hotel, which are the three parts of the training. Then I went to Paris to study photography for 3 years, where I did a BTM in photography and worked for 3 years in a press agency, taking photos of celebrities in particular. After that, I didn't really want to stay in the press world, so I took a year off. Then I did a two-year BTS (vocational training certificate) in business administration. And then I remixed everything a bit, doing a degree in Community Manager and Brand Content: I ran the social networks for a boutique selling luxury dresses for rent in Paris.

Then I got fed up with being an employee - it's hard in the working world, because I'm hypersensitive and I have ADHD(Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), so it's really hard for me to fit in. I'm a free spirit, I need to be kept busy and given assignments, otherwise I get bored and depressed. So setting up my own business was the best solution, because I'm very busy and tired! For the time being, I see myself here and nowhere else.

I've always made pastries on the side, and I wanted to launch my own brand. However, there are two aspects to pastry-making: you need a CAP in pastry-making to work with creams and anything else you add after baking. With a diploma in hotel management, you can make glazes, or chocolate, nothing perishable. It's all very precise, and you have to be careful! Being on my own, I can't make cream cakes. I sublimate the gluten-free and lactose-free travel cake, with Swiss meringue, in the shape of flowers, which takes me several hours, and can be difficult with the disease.

The name "Healfy by Alfy"

With my family it was very toxic and difficult, they didn't believe my pain at first, for them it was simulated. My brand "Healfy by Alfy" was to prove that we can change things and mentalities.

I chose Healfy because of its health aspect: I don't put much emphasis on that, but it was completely reducing lactose and gluten that saved me, and that's what I want to promote. I don't use refined sugar in the decorations. The meringue will always be there, because it's my trademark, and people can choose not to have icing too, and choose whole sugar, which means unprocessed and untreated, to reduce inflammation: my cakes are three times less sweet than bakery cakes, so it's still very groumand.

I made my cakes for myself, then for my friends and family; nobody ate gluten-free or lactose-free food, and I was told they were very good. I wanted to make cakes, to help others and to make people understand that mentalities can be changed. The part where I didn't have any support came from people close to me, but I found a lot more support from people who weren't close to me. Now my family understands my approach a lot better. A lot of people tell me that I'm surfing on the trend, without having read my presentation board, but it was really authentic and deep-rooted as a passion for entrepreneurship, which isn't always easy: as many constraints and disadvantages as in a salaried job, it's a real life choice that I made.

Remedying the bad press surrounding gluten-free and lactose-free cakes

This was the case when I did the "Marché des Créateurs" in St-Ouen, where people had tasted other gluten-free and lactose-free products and were surprised by the quality: unfortunately, this reputation of gluten-free and lactose-free products can work against me. People have to take the plunge and then come back, knowing that it can be tasty and delicious.
I know my product is good! I even have customers who eat gluten lactose and prefer my cakes for their texture, because they're melt-in-the-mouth and soft!

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Meeting with Sortir à Paris

"Margot, your journalist, contacted me last year in December. She was looking for entrepreneurs and small artisans to feature in the January galette des rois, and you had plenty of big names! Le Crillon, Mariage Frères... I had a bit of imposter syndrome! This year, it was My who contacted me again to have my galette, for the gluten-free, lactose-free alternative, but also affordable (VS some of its competitors who are around sixty euros, editor's note). A lot of brands have no story behind them, just offering gluten-free and lactose-free like that. For me, these are unreasonable prices, while I'm told they're too expensive, but I make my authorized margin, the bakery margin (between prices and costs ed.). It's a moral question, I don't know if anyone checks, but I had a base that I couldn't exceed. People are surprised by the 21 euros for cakes for 6 people... when sometimes elsewhere big names do similar things, even times two, and it doesn't surprise anyone."

"Following the article, I had a lot of orders on the Galette des Rois, and a lot of comments telling me that it was great to revisit the galette and have a gluten-free and lactose-free option for all concerned. I've thus met a much wider audience thanks to you, thank you!"

"I love testing, I have an idea, I'm going to make it, and I said to myself I had to make a cake around almonds for the Galette des Rois, and the almond tree came to mind, that's how I created my recipe! I'm very creative, I can't stand still, so it's very instinctive."

An entrepreneurial adventure to combine with illness

"With my illness, the heaviest burden is chronic fatigue. With the intense month of December, I can sleep 12 hours a day, but it's hard to recover. Sometimes it's difficult to work alone in the company, but for the moment I'm fine with it. I still make all the deliveries myself, because they're a real problem - even for all the entrepreneurs around me - you don't know if the cake will arrive whole! You can't lose the raw material and reimburse the customer on top of that, even if I don't have any cream or cake design, but my decoration with the broken meringues, for the first few years I'm not going to take the risk."

"The same goes for considering the potential opening of a boutique with my illness and chronic fatigue, I have to be aware of it and be able to assume, the little "don't forget you have an autoimmune disease" reminder is there. A lot of people thought I wouldn't last at first, but I'm making progress."

Assessment after one year

"It's progressing well, I'm not really walking. The fact that I have good communication, the website, the videos, the photos, the animations on social networks gives me confidence and the retailers come to me. I have three official ones: Café Alva in Enghien-les-Bains, Le Gentleman du Bicycle, cours des Lavandières in St Ouen, and a Local&Vous grocery store on Avenue Gabriel Péri in St Ouen. My goal is to have more retailers, but I do B2B and B2C, I don't know how it's going to turn out, I think I'll have to choose at some point."

"The biggest part of my business in the beginning was direct customers (B2C), but now, since I have two resale outlets in st-Ouen, I get more consumption on the share, and Café Alva takes a lot of orders, the biggest share every week."

Discovering the soul of St-Ouen

I've been in St-Ouen for seven years now, at first I was studying, so I wasn't aware of or interested in the town, I didn't think there was such a soul in the city. Then, at the start of Healthy by Alfy, I joined the Odoniens Facebook group, where there are now 10,000 of us, talking about news and new boutiques."

St-Ouen has changed a lot, but I stayed because I like it here, and I now have a large part of my clientele here. The people are great, and there's a beautiful soul that I see now. The Gentleman du Bicycle, which also sells my cakes, is a really nice place to relax, right in the heart of the new district, and then there's the grocery store in the center, Local &Vous, which sells only products from the Île-de-France region.

A final message to pass on to Parisians of all ages?

"You have to taste it to believe it, take the plunge to believe it, and people aren't disappointed! The worst comment I ever got on a peanut butter cake was that it was very good, but too simple for them. So I say to myself that this is also my concept, that what I stand for is also simplicity and quality! And thanks to Sortir à Paris for coming to St-Ouen too!"