2018: Le Monde des Boulangers tells the story of BO&MIE’s beginnings

In November 2018, BO&MIE has just celebrated its first birthday. The trade press takes an interest before the general press does.

Two career changes

The article goes back over how the project came about. After selling his stake in Venum, Jean-François Bandet trains at Ferrandi to prepare his career change. That is where he meets Magali Szekula, also changing careers, there to take her CAP boulanger, the French baker’s vocational diploma.

Together, in November 2017, they open a first 240 m² shop on the rue de Turbigo.

It is all already there

The magazine describes the fundamentals: artisanal production, traditional breads and pastries revisited, teams drawn from great Parisian houses, and the will to keep prices affordable.

Two points are worth noting with hindsight. The name first, which states the programme: a bakery that lays claim to creation without leaving the trade. Then the premises — 240 m² for a first shop, when custom had it that you start small and grow later.

Read again eight years on, this profile matters above all for what it foreshadows: the essence of what would become the BO&MIE model is already set out by the end of the first year. What has changed since is the scale — not the method. The rest is told in our story.