Eau de Baked Goods

So my job ends the day at the cleaning yard which is located right next to La Boulange's baking headquarters.  As we're cleaning the contents of the day's work, we can all smell the fresh baked bread coming from the other side of the fence.  None of us has ever been inside the factory. Until me.

It was an emergency! I needed a restroom! Per usual, all the workers are Latino so I can only ramble in my broken Spanish to get in the door at 10pm. The guy was very amused and basically snuck me in.  When you walk into the building, on the left are the offices, to the right is the locked door into the bakery. He enters the code and waits for me to enter. By the door is a box of hairnets and shoe booties. OMGOSH! It feels like college when I had to enter the food laboratory. I hesitated since I can see in very large font: ALL WORKERS MUST WEAR HAIRNETS AND BOOTIES. I understand the importance of food safety as all the information was drilled into me over 4years of college. I grabbed both and threw them on immediately. The second I walked into the main floor, it was pure magic. There is flour EVERYWHERE. On the floors, on the walls, in the air. It smelled amazing. I wanted to stay there forever. Alas, I did my business and got out of there before anyone would question why I was there. But I do want to return. As a quality control inspector possibly? :D Yes, I'll need to eat everything.

As you probably heard from the news, Starbucks acquired La Boulange hoping to incorporate the baked goods into all their stores. Yay?

I'd like to contribute to this section: "With the acquisition, the Seattle-based coffeehouse chain plans to beef up its food offerings in Starbucks stores with La Boulange-branded French pastries, croissants, breads and muffins, which company officials hope will drive traffic and build the chain’s food attachment rate."

Read more: http://nrn.com/article/starbucks-buy-la-boulange-bakery-100m#ixzz1zVrFTQ00

Starbucks has been working on this for a long time.  In fact, I met the Starbucks marketing manager and she liked my shoes. But anyways, they were hoping to work on their food offerings. The company I was at did an analysis of their current offerings and bleck. Low quality and non-substantial amounts of food. Plus, boring and completely unappealing. So we were told to do more research into lunch "boxes" from major retailers. I guess they didn't want to go through more R&D as they clearly just bought La Boulange to give them that option now. Business is a fickle thing. Starbucks, to customers right now, is purely a coffee house. Well now Starbucks hopes to take more of your money by offering lunch options. I'm sure they are working with Pascal Rigo on that right now. A new panini or something? So get ready to see some test runs in certain Starbucks retailers. Only time will tell if consumers will associate lunch with Starbucks. 

That is all.