January 2017 | Business View Magazine

50 51 Le Macaron French Pastries Le Macaron French Pastries The quality of a thing done right “The first bite is a surprise, the second bite is the flavor, and the third bite is a plea- sure.” That’s how Rosalie Guillem, owner of Le Macaron French Pastries, describes the experience of tasting one of the traditional, French macarons that she and her daughter, Audrey Saba, serve to their American cus- tomers at one of their elegant pâtisseries. “It’s a little piece of joy,” Guillem adds, en- thusiastically. The mother and daughter team opened their first boutique café in August 2009 on St. Armands Circle, in Sarasota, Florida, sev- en years after Guillem moved to the United States from France and shortly after Audrey joined her. “We wanted to start something together,” says Guillem. “The idea was to open some kind of bakery. Something that we were very fond of in France and not able to find in the U.S.A., at the time, was the French macaron, which we really loved.” But even with years of perfecting her traditional pastries behind her, the store’s beginning was slow and shaky. “The first year was very difficult,” she says, “because it was the Great Recession. Other stores were closing and we were opening ours. But we thought that everybody could afford to buy a macaron. In the beginning, customers did not know what a macaron was,” she adds. “They thought it was a mini-hamburger. But soon, we became a place to visit and the macaron started to become popular in Sara-