Today we’d like to introduce you to Marine Le Faucheur.
Hi Marine, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Thibaut and I have been in the food industry since we started working. Thibaut is a pastry chef full of passion and love for what he does. He has 28 years of experience, and after owning two bakeries in Paris for 10 years, he moved to LA to bring his talent and passion overseas. I have 17 years of experience in the food industry and have gone through every role in it. I love customer service, sharing some good times with them and some even become friends! It took us two years to find the perfect location and once we did Covid just started but we still rook the risk. Thank you to our landlord for believing in us. His support and trust pushed us even more. Less than two years later we signed our second location that we just opened😁 It has been two years working seven days a week but nothing comes easy and when you have a great team that sticks with you in good and hard times, it lifts you up.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Food industry will never be a smooth road. Especially when we opened in August 2020 with all the city requirements with Covid changing every couple of weeks.🤯 We didn’t know what to expect and we had some rough times of course. We were two French people learning it all along the way. We grew fast enough but as you grow, you hire more people, more work, and more stress… Doing it all while raising our baby girl was the hardest part. We are a family first and not having one full day with her broke our hearts more than once. We sacrifice a lot knowing it will be a long road but the satisfaction of our customers, all the support and Love we receive make it all worth it!
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Sweet Lily Bakery?
We are a French Bakery Cafe offering Fresh viennoiseries, breads and pastries every morning as well as delicious breakfast and lunch! Thibaut won best Eclair of Paris out of 400 contestants and have a love for piece montée. He can create any shape, from an Eiffel tower to a motorcycle, a private island or even a hotel… Our customers love the fact that when they walk in Sweet Lily, they have no doubt that everything is fresh from the morning. Thibaut and I truly believe that we have to respect the people coming to us and serve them with the best items they can find. It took some time for people to understand that even if we are a bakery we still offer delicious breakfast and lunch. We love it when people tell us they feel the difference eating a sandwich with fresh baguette or French toast with fresh Brioche. We also do lots of catering events for weddings, birthdays, baby showers and wholesale for restaurants and cafés. We are excited to know that people from Santa Barbara, Irvine and San Fransisco inquire us for some wedding croquembouche and pastries.
Thibaut and I always have been hard workers, working over 70h a week and we started from the bottom at 16 to be where we’re at today, him as a Pastry cook and me in restaurants. When you go from employee to employer, you have to manage all the aspects of being the owner and all its struggle while still remembering that your staff’s personal life matters too. We are so grateful of the people working for us and believing in us. It is not easy and food industry is often underrated. I have so much love and respect for every single one of them and I believe they know it. At the end of the day, we go home stressed and exhausted but they go home and have their own life to take care of. It’s a balance of teamwork, love and support. We try our best even though we make some mistakes along the way. We know that without our team we wouldn’t have Sweet Lily.
We just opened our second location in Culver City Downtown and we are so excited about it. Meeting new customers, a new team. It’s always exciting even though exhausting😅. A new challenge and once again, our team help us so much to make this work!
What does success mean to you?
Success can mean so many things. Just opening our first location was a success for us. After so many ups and down for 2 years, disappointment and rejections, it felt amazing. Especially in that beautiful and spacious place. We couldn’t have dreamt of a better place. Then reaching a certain amount was a success. Having important people ordering from you. People offering you a space overseas. People asking you for a franchise. Every little positive thing is a success for us.
As long as people will be happy with what we do we will feel successful because we get up early every morning with a purpose that gets filled with recognition and love. We have a long rocky road ahead of us and we will keep working hard but if one day we have to stop it will still be a success because we would have given it everything we had, our last sweat and tear. No matter where we are heading, we already feel successful just to have made it to that point with so little to start with but our courage, trust and love for each other❤️
Contact Info:
- Website: Sweetlilyla.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/sweetlilyla?igshid=MWM2YjBjM2Q=
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sweet-Lily-Bakery-107391537741888/
