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Louis Le Duff
A real trade
based on dough :
bread dough, brioche dough,
pastry dough,
pizza dough...
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Page 2 of 6
Then he developed a long-term subscription system and turned himself into a team manager, recruiting some forty students to sell newspapers in the west of France.
Setting up his own business was vital to him, one might say written into his genes. Oddly enough, it was not Brittany but the North which beckoned. He read in the story of Paul Dubrule in the Entreprise magazine and decided to cross the Atlantic too. No money? No matter.
He took a State competitive exam and won a bursary to study for an MBA – Master in Business Administration – at the University of Sherbrooke near Montreal in the early 1970s.
He knew nothing of the restaurant business but saw how successful the crêperies were in Montreal and New York. Without giving up his studies, he decided to open one in a Quebec ski resort. This is how he cut his teeth in the industry…
Above all, in America he discovered that anyone who really wants to set up in business can do so and succeed. His recipe for success is this cocktail of education and energy.
In his four years in North America, he discovered the American way of life. “The Americans were ten years ahead of us in their way of life and consumption habits: husbands and wives had a car each, a job each, worked all day, drove on motorways, travelled a lot, slept in motels, shopped in supermarkets, ate in restaurant chains and so on. |
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I could see the same things would happen in France. I analysed a number of projects from computing equipment chains to selling by phone.”
Louis Le Duff finally opted for neo-catering. He moved into action as soon as he got back in 1974. He returned to the university sector, first as assistant lecturer at the Rouen business school, then as lecturer at the Rennes University institute of technology where he subsequently became a senior lecturer. This satisfied his hunger for learning and teaching, gave him a living wage and above all left him the time and freedom to work on his project, since his teaching workload was only 192 hours a year.
And his intention was? Not crêpes in Brittany! That’s on every street corner. No, the Brioche Dorée project was quite clear in his mind, a concept of casual food in the French tradition : “The idea of baker’s bread, dairy butter, pork butcher’s ham and greengrocer’s lettuce together under the same roof to offer the customer a good sandwich. French casual food served non-stop with freshly-baked products for every moment of the day – coffee and croissant for breakfast, a chocolate roll for elevenses, sandwiches, quiches, salads and a dish of the day for lunch, tarts and pastries in the afternoon and takeaway meals to eat at home in the evening.”
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