It takes guts—and a love of macarons—to quit your corporate job after six years, enroll in an intensive pastry program, and start your own French bakery business in Dallas. But Andrea Meyer, head pastry chef and owner of Bisous Bisous Patisserie, did just that.
After marrying her high school sweetheart at age 23, Meyer and her new husband jetted off to Paris for a romantic honeymoon. She had her first taste of a French vanilla macaron at Ladurée, and said she fell in love with the tiny treat that instant. In the following years, she played with the idea of starting her own bakery, and after spending three months in France for her previous job, she returned to the States to begin shaping her idea into reality.
In January 2013, ten years after her Paris honeymoon, Meyer opened Bisous Bisous Patisserie (which means “kiss kiss” in French). She rents a kitchen space in downtown Dallas, though she is in the process of securing a retail spot for her bakery with the hopes of opening by the end of October.
“I’m a chef. I want to be in my own space,” she said, even though she boasts of the cleanliness and convenience of Culinary Kitchen and Beyond, her rented spot.
She sells her confections (ranging from small cakes, to French-style pastries and cookies, to, of course, macarons of all flavors) in a number of locations. She hopes to snag a storefront in a new building under construction in Uptown, but for now she sells a selection of her goodies via Nespresso Coffee Boutique, online artisan market Artizone, and the White Rock Local Market.
These sale avenues, plus private orders for parties, office gatherings, and showers, accumulate the creation of over 1,000 macarons weekly. Macarons are by far Meyer’s most popular pastry. With her business still blooming, Meyer has yet to hire more hands to help her in the kitchen. She does work with a few culinary students, though, who volunteer extra time to get pastry-making experience.
“Every macaron you see,” she said, “I touched.”
And that’s what we call dedication to the craft.
Audrey Swanson is a D Magazine intern.
