Baking&Snack - June 2014 - 32

GALAXY DESSERTS | BRIOCHE PASQUIER

Brioche's potential to change American tastes excites the Galaxy Desserts/
Brioche Pasquier team: (from left) Jean-Yves Charon, founder and pastry chef;
Hugues Pasqueir, sales manager; and Paul Levitan, president and CEO.
Lori Eanes

when we launched our chocolate croissant, and we now
sell more of those than the plain ones."
If all goes according to plan - and the plan is going well - Galaxy Desserts will double the size of its
Richmond, CA, facility to install a large new line the
likes of which American bakers have never seen before.
Mr. Levitan revealed that executives have already committed to saying "yes" on making brioche at this location; it's now a matter of deciding when to start.

The 'Oprah Effect'

A five-year courtship
"It seems like we 'dated' Brioche Pasquier for five years,
"
said Paul Levitan, president and CEO, Galaxy Desserts, about
the company's 2012 affiliation with the international baking company based at Les Cerqueux in France's Loire River
Valley. Counting Galaxy, the French company operates 17
locations and banked close to US$1 billion in sales last year.
Top executives from both companies first met at the 2009
Summer Fancy Food Show in New York. "Over the next few
years, they visited us, and we visited them, Mr. Levitan
"
continued. "The first time I spoke with CEO Pascal Pasquier,
we talked core values, and we learned we held identical
ones. Over the years, and many trips back and forth, the
"
two sets of entrepreneurs hit it off both professionally and
personally. "We started talking about the opportunity we
had, Mr. Levitan recalled.
"
Jean-Yves Charon, founder and pastry chef, Galaxy
Desserts, said the offer from the Pasquier family came on
Valentine's Day in 2011.
"It took about a year, and here we are, Mr. Levitan said.
"
The two businesses are now one. "From the Galaxy side,
we have access to the best manufacturing expertise we've
ever seen, Mr. Levitan said. "We were blown away. We had
"
taken little steps, but now we took a really giant leap, and
the brioche adventure will be the next step.
"From the Pasquier perspective, they made the perfect
choice in the US, he continued. "With us, they get a com"
bination of the US and France and the entrepreneurial spirit
that is uniquely American. That's what we bring.
"
In January 2013, Hugues Pasquier, the grandson of the
bakery founder and nephew of the current CEO, moved his
wife and young family to California to help Galaxy launch
brioche products. He has full responsibility for the line as its
sales manager.

32 Baking & Snack June 2014 / www.bakingandsnack.com

The past decade brought plenty of good changes to
Galaxy, especially in product volume. "The croissant
part of our business is much bigger today than the
mousse products we started with," Mr. Charon said, "and
we still do plenty of those products, too."
Galaxy almost single-handedly created the mail-order
frozen croissant craze. Well, Oprah Winfrey helped, too.
She featured the company's French Butter Croissants
during her show's Favorite Things 2002 episode. "That
catapulted us into a much bigger market," Ms. HangadO'Shaughnessy said. "We went into 24/7 production."
Mr. Levitan added, "People called and called and
called. At the time, we were making the best croissants
around, but they were a side business. We went from
hand-rolling the dough to buying seven sheeters. And
now we have Line No. 23 in place that outputs croissants
at the rate of thousands per hour."
The Oprah Effect transformed nearly everything. "At
the time, we were mostly a foodservice supplier," Mr.
Charon explained, "but now the business is 60% retail
and 40% foodservice.
Holiday mail orders for frozen croissants and dessert
items keep the Richmond plant humming around the
clock during November and December, but the croissant
business actually made Galaxy less seasonal. "Croissants
helped even us out," Mr. Levitan said. "It's a very steady
business, and brioche will make us even more so."
Croissants brought breakfast pastries to the forefront
of Galaxy's business, and that set the table for brioche.
Brioche Pasquier developed a proprietary process that
makes its products noticeably different from its competitors: They stay fresh longer with a shelf life of 21
days when produced in the US. Rich in butter and eggs,
brioche can be difficult to process. Although Pasquier
automated its production methods, the company was
careful to retain traditional parameters.
"To explain how serious Pasquier is about its brioche,"
Mr. Charon related, "one of the first things the family

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