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The Fast-Paced History of La Madeleine French Bakery & Café
- Evan Huang
- Apr 8, 2021
- 3 min read
How a small restaurant chain expanded nationally in just a few decades
La Madeleine is a French bakery-cafe with 86 locations in ten states in the United States. The restaurant chain serves French cuisine, including breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The first La Madeleine location, located in Dallas, Texas, still operates today. Let’s take a look at the history of this staple of French cuisine.
Humble Beginnings
La Madeleine was founded by Patrick Esquerre, a French businessman, in 1983. Esquerre had originally immigrated to the United States to book foreign rodeos, but that career path did not succeed. Esquerre decided instead to open a French restaurant with the culinary knowledge of his mother, Monique Esquerre, from whom he learned his cooking and baking skills. With help from Neiman Marcus heir Stanley Marcus, Esquerre established La Madeleine, a “family” of authentic French bakery-cafes designed to bring a taste of French cuisine and culture to the United States. He opened the first cafe location near Southern Methodist University in Highland Park, Texas, seeking to attract college students. The namesake of the establishment is L'église de la Madeleine, a church in Paris, France.
Rapid Growth
In 1984, La Madeleine’s second location opened in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Although La Madeleine originally was solely a bakery, serving French breads and pastries, its menu grew to include other French dishes. To ensure that La Madeleine’s cuisine was authentic, Esquerre hired chefs from France to work at his restaurants. These chefs prepare traditional menu items as well as seasonal dishes for holidays like Valentine’s Day, Christmas, and Mardi Gras. By 1993, just a decade after the company’s founding, La Madeleine had 16 locations in Texas and Louisiana. A year later, La Madeleine had opened locations in Phoenix, Atlanta, Washington D.C., and Baton Rouge. As the company grew, the role of Esquerre’s leadership diminished in importance. From 1992, a series of CEOs took over La Madeleine, and in 1997, Esquerre officially left the company and sold his remaining share in the bakery chain. After Esquerre’s departure, La Madeleine continued to grow, adding more locations as well as menu items. In April 1998, a new style of cafe opened, named La Madeleine Cuisine, that was aimed at providing an alternative to takeout. This new style of cafe was smaller and offered fewer menu options than traditional La Madeleines.
Present-day Operations
Presently, La Madeleine has 68 locations in North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Virginia. The dining style has slowly evolved from a cafeteria-style to a more modern ordering station style with a take-out option available. French chefs still work in the kitchens of each cafe, and they work with American managers. Each restaurant is designed to look like a restaurant in the French countryside. The interior of each restaurant is decorated with farm tools and impressionist artwork, and some locations have a fireplace. In 2010, Patrick Esquerre rejoined La Madeleine as an advisor, aiming to revitalize the brand. Since then, the company has continued to grow, opening two or three locations and making hundreds of millions of dollars in sales every year. This has made it one of the most successful and fastest-growing French restaurant chains in the United States. From humble roots in Texas, La Madeleine has become a staple of French food across the country.
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