Despite rocky start, French bakery is doing better than ever

The first shop was in Vancouver, not long after Bernaudin left his job in Tokyo, and the loss took substantial effort from which to financially recover. When he relocated to San Mateo, he decided to start another venture, mostly selling cookies, this time right before a global pandemic. 

That could have dissuaded many entrepreneurs from continuing an already risky endeavor but, over the five years since the COVID-19 lockdown, Bonjour Bakehouse has flipped a potentially bad omen on its head.

In addition to cookies, the French bakery now makes and sells croissants and scones customers can order from a walk-up window on Howard Avenue in San Mateo. The scones are both savory and sweet — ranging from mushroom and corn jalapeno to pear and cardamom — and the croissants also come in multiple flavors such as almond, ham and cheese, or chocolate. 

The goal is to make French pastries more accessible, retaining the same high quality but less expensive and in a more casual ambiance, he said.

Bonjour’s ability to grow at a slow and steady pace even during a period of economic uncertainty is in part attributable to Ingrid Sarlandie, a Bonjour co-owner who quit a grueling mechanical engineering job to operate the business alongside Bernaudin about three years ago. 

“I was completely burned out,” Sarlandie said. “I took some pastry training and was focused on baking and then I met Francois, and I was like, ‘This is what I need.’ It clicked immediately.” 

Sarlandie, who is also French, said the partnership is a perfect complement of one another’s strengths — Sarlandie focusing on business operations and Bernaudin leaning on his culinary expertise. Their upbringings in France give both of them an uncompromising lens through which to judge their work. 

“When our families say we can sell it, then we know it’s very good, because they’re super strict with us,” Sarlandie said.

A notable French customer base, however, seems like evidence of the Bonjour Bakehouse’s authenticity and quality. In France, it’s not uncommon to judge a bakery by its croissant, a standard they still adhere to in San Mateo. 

“You can’t add any chocolate or fruit to change the taste, so if you want to judge a bakery, order the croissants and then you can tell if the menu is going to be good or not,” she said. 

In fact, the bakery won third place in a San Francisco competition that judges croissants from bakeries throughout the Bay Area. 

The duo only uses seasonal fruit in their pastries, often relying on the abundant supplies from their customers and neighbors' properties and farms. That was the impetus for their Meyer lemon scones, the byproduct of a neighbor's healthy backyard tree. And after having trouble securing olallieberries, a frequent customer helped supply them with the unique fruit from Pescadero. Even in the midst of an egg shortage, Sarlandie said their suppliers didn’t raise the prices on them.

“The community is super strong here. One local producer said, ‘I could sell you the eggs at twice the price but I'm not going to do it because what’s the impact going to be on a small family business?’ We’re lucky enough that for some products we can limit the damage,” Sarlandie said. “Yes it's a lot of work, it's a lot of challenges, but …  day to day, you get rewarded immediately.”