Bonjour,

French food shops, such as bakeries and pastry shops, operate under completely different circumstances than here in the United States. I learned that early on our trip and found it both fascinating and endearing in terms of the French, their laws, and their food. For example, here in the U.S., if I wanted to open a bakery, I could just file the business license paperwork and open shop. I wouldn’t need to know anything about baking and no one would ask me about it. I also wouldn’t need to bake anything in my shop; I could just buy someone else’s baked goods and sell them in my bakery. For that matter, I wouldn’t even need to sell baked goods in my bakery. Not so in France.

From what several guides told us, in France, you must pass tests to open a bakery. They interview you and ask you questions about baking. You must prove that you know how to bake by doing some baking for them. Further, to call your shop a bakery, you would need to have the dough-making and baking equipment right in your shop – or again, you could not call it a bakery. We were told that the French are very strict about this. That reassures the French that they are buying real baked good in a boulangerie. The same thing goes for other goods, such as pastry.

1. I chose this photo to start for several reasons. This sign shows “Boulanger – Patissier”, which means “Baker – Pastry Cook”. It might have said boulangerie-patisserie for bakery-pastry shop. Most signs said this.

2. If you look down the street at the bend, you can see a Café Brasserie. This is a brewery or certain type of French restaurant. Again, specific requirements go with this.

3. On the very right, you can see the Creperie or pancake house where we went in Monaco.

4. A Fromagerie is a cheese shop. No guide told us about a fromagerie but I feel confident that the French have some standards on what the shop must do on site.

5. Let it never be said that the French don’t have a sense of humor….

Voila,

Bill