BO&MIE, “a big little company, entirely artisanal”

After Louvre-Rivoli, La Toque is less interested in the size of the shop than in the model behind it.

What we don’t do

In it, Jean-François Bandet defends a position by negation. No industrial mixes to simplify production. No product added to the range when the teams don’t have the means to make it properly. The flours, mostly Label Rouge, are blended by the bakers on site, with no improver or preservative.

Put another way: the production constraint decides the menu, not the other way round. That is what limits the number of references, and it is a deliberate choice.

A bakery that talks

The article also looks at the role social media took on very early in the house’s development, at a time when traditional bakeries were still wary of it. Showing the making, the gestures and the teams was not a marketing choice: it was the simplest way of saying what happens behind the counter.

The profile sums up the ambition of that period fairly well: grow the size of the company without transforming its way of doing things. What came next is detailed in our craft.