“If I started baking it was, above all, because I wanted to make money. I grew up in a very modest environment, in Orne, in Normandy, a region where there are more cows than people. My father was in the army, my mother was a housewife and did housework from time to time. My grandparents were farmers, in mixed crops. I spent a lot of time on their farm, which certainly brought me closer to nature and animals very early on.
I did my scientific baccalaureate, I wanted to do ethology. Then my father introduced me to a baker who had many shops, and when I found out how much he earned, I told myself that this was the way to go, because people would always eat bread. The plan was simple: I was going to learn a manual trade, set up my business and develop the business. I became a companion of service, an apprenticeship that has existed since the time of the cathedrals, to learn manual trades traveling for five years with a group of apprentices.
Then I worked in some big restaurants in cooking, pastry and baking, then I opened my first boutique Maison Landemaine, rue de Clichy, in Paris, in 2007. I was 27 years old. Today, the brand has 37 stores and has gone from seven to 700 employees. Ten years ago I became vegan. It was a pretty violent transition, it was a bit schizophrenic to lead a group that uses products of animal origin. At one point I almost sold everything. But since I already had a certain voice in the ecosystem, I decided to stay, to have an impact, to explore the idea of a 100% plant-based bakery.
Seven or eight years ago it was difficult to imagine a bakery without butter, without eggs, without milk, but today it is almost normal. My teams worked hard to design sweet and savory offerings that appeal to customers because they’re good, not because they’re vegan. Like this vegetable pâté sandwich, called “Campagnard”, which for me is emblematic: it is very French, traditional, simple and tasty. We recognize the classic. The fact that they are vegetables is secondary.
We first launched our concept under the name “Land & Monkeys”, in an old bakery on Boulevard Beaumarchais, in Paris. We tripled our turnover in one year and in the process opened five more stores. We moved to triple accounting (which takes into account economic, environmental and social performance), we became a “mission-based company”.
My goal is to get the industry asking questions, to show that we can be green and participate in building a better world while still being profitable. The greatest lever of change for citizens is food. By greening your plate, you can dramatically reduce your carbon footprint and feed many more people on the planet, while preserving it.
land-and-monkeys.com
