January 2017 | Business View Magazine

52 53 Le Macaron French Pastries sota. After a few months, we had people driving from Naples, from Tampa, from Orlando, just to buy boxes of macarons.” In quick succession, the store added gelato, coffee, croissants, fine chocolates, éclairs, co- conut cakes, and other culinary delights to its offerings. Audrey’s husband, Didier Saba, Le Macaron’s pastry chef, flavored his creations with Madagascan vanilla beans, lemon zest, and other quality ingredients. Each of the 20 vari- eties of macaron was hand-filled with ganache, which is a chocolate concoction, cream, or fruit GTI Designs will provide you with 3D design, sophisticated display case options, millwork, seating, food service equipment and refrigeration solutions. Let us Design it, Build it and Install it. Your One Stop Design, Build and Supply Company. Let us DESIGN + BUILD your Bakery x Coffee Shop x Cafe x Ice Cream/Gelato Shop x Restaurant x Market 1-800-896-4484 www.gtidesigns.com preserves. The store was very elegant and designed in the mode of a typical French café. “When you came in our store to enjoy your coffee and a macaron, it’s like you’re having a one hour, mini-vacation and a little piece of France,” Guillem says. “People loved it.” By 2012, Le Macaron had become locally famous and customers began requesting the opportunity to open their own stores. So Guillem decided to franchise the concept. Today, there are 45 Le Macaron locations, 38 of which are franchises and the rest, corporate-owned. The majority of stores are in Florida, but there are already units are in Puerto Rico, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, and California, with plans to open more stores in New York, Texas, and other states, as well. All of Le Macaron’s signature pastries are still hand- crafted at the original Sarasota location; the small kitch- AT A GLANCE Le Macaron French Pastries WHAT: French style boutique cafés serving traditional pastries WHERE: Headquarters in Sarasota, Florida WEBSITE: www.lemacaron-us.com