bake - March 2018 - 24
life lessons BY JOHN UNREIN Few bakers have lived through such unique experiences as Pascal Rigo has encountered. Acclaimed baker Pascal Rigo remembers the crazy days of his first baking experience in La La Land. During the early 1990s, he was baking artisan breads in Los Angeles where he started doing business with fancy hotels, crafting stylish sourdough loaves and delivering them in baskets. "Americans didn't consume bread the way the way we do," he recalls, with a nod to his home country of France. "I wasn't trying to replace. I wanted to just add something else." Rigo was making fabulous breads in assorted styles and flavors, some with cheese or walnuts, and selling to restaurants and hotels, until he decided to open his first retail store in Southern California. "I was so busy I would fall asleep at a traffic light when it was red," he recalls. Soon he had opened three retail stores but later sold out to a major chain. "I sold the company to California Pizza Kitchen in 20 minutes," says Rigo, who was asked to stay on as a consultant for months. "I stayed for six hours and drove to San Francisco." Fast forward to February 2018. Speaking at Europain in Paris, the baker who brought artisan breads to Trader Joe's and Starbucks discussed how he remains as committed as ever to producing great-tasting organic breads at affordable prices. Rigo said he walked away from a partnership with Starbucks in 2015 after helping the chain double its annual food sales to $3 billion in three years. Then he went on to introduce La Boulangarie retail bakeries in San Francisco. But now his eyes have turned back to his home country of France where he is embarking on a new style of small artisan bakeries to the Bordeaux region of France, where he grew up and first learned his beloved trade. According to reports, France has lost thousands of bakeries over the past decade because of hard boulangeries in small towns, hoping to fix the finances and reopen the stores. "Today, I feel that I am a full product of a French education. I realized there was a real opportunity to 24 < MAR 2018 | bakemag.com JOHN UNREIN economic times. Now Rigo is seeking out closed
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