Seattle French bakery opens stand at Sammamish Farmers Market
The Sammamish Farmers Market, a weekly place of gathering on the plateau from May to September, has a new vendor this year — The French Guys.
It is a bakery run by two French guys, Thibault Beaugendre and Renaud Lacipiere, who started the business in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We saw the opportunity for French baking in Seattle, so we decided to create a business during the pandemic,” Lacipiere said.
The French Guys are known for their pain au chocolat, croissants, and more recently, the bicolor croissants. Lacipiere described the bicolor croissants as a “croissant with a small extra layer that’s colored in either red or black.” The colored layer is made using food color. Lacipiere believes that they have risen in popularity because of their modern appeal to customers.
Beaugendre and Lacipiere’s initial idea was to deliver French baked goods to houses. They soon expanded to farmers markets around the Puget Sound region to reach more customers, with the aim of bringing a taste of their culture of here.
The French Guys bakeries use pure flour to make their pastries and baked goods. This means the flour is solely made of wheat, with no other additives, which is healthier for customers.
“Buying the flour from France, it was one of our goals when we opened the business, but we were too small in the beginning to buy from France,” Lacipiere said, citing the high cost of buying in small volume.
Since then, the bakery has grown and they have partnered with Foricher, a French company, to supply their flour directly.
“The flour we use from them has a very well known label. It’s very healthy and good to use for traditional bakeries,” Lacipiere said.
The French Guys have three permanent locations in Seattle — in Capitol Hill, U-Village and SoDo, which they also use as their production facility.
“We have a big demand on the Eastside. We were more present in the Seattle area, and as we grew, we met many people asking us to come on the Eastside,” Lacipiere said.
That feedback influenced them to participate in the Sammamish Farmers Market this year, along with 18 other farmers markets in the area.
“The idea is to keep doing what we love, sell the product, trying to make the best quality product, and again trying to be able to offer the Sammamish community what we can find in the big cities like Seattle,” Lacipiere said.
The Sammamish Farmers Market is open every Wednesday from 4 to 8 p.m. through September 9. For more information, visit sammamishfarmersmarket.org.
