If you’re looking for an exceptional combination of pastry and potions in the City of Grand Rapids, look no further than Chartreuse Sisters. Actual sisters Alyson and Mallory Caillaud-Jones founded their cafe in 2019 after a unique education in entrepreneurship that included a visit to the Grand Rapids Public Library. I sat down with Alyson and Mallory to learn their perspectives on sweets, culture, and commerce in our current era.
Steven Assarian: How did this whole idea get off the ground?
Alyson Caillaud-Jones: Well, we were both working in film and video after college. Both of us had been in this gig for so long that we'd worked in coffee shops. I had developed a knowledge of coffee and mixology. I wanted to make coffee, but I didn’t want to work for someone else.
It was one of those wild moments. Mal and I were in a coffee shop (I'm getting a little emotional just thinking about it) and I said ‘This is what I’d like to do.’ I didn’t know how to start a cafe, or anything like that. My first thought was: Is that allowed?
Mallory Caillaud-Jones: Alyson said “I'll do it if you do it with me.” I asked ‘What am I going to do?’ That’s when she asked me to bake. I've always loved baking, but it was just something I did for friends and family. I had never thought it could be something I did professionally.
It started as a fun conversation, but as we kept talking, we started to look at what we’d need to do to make this work as a business. We started doing pop ups and farmers markets to see if people wanted what we were selling.
Steven: Tell me about your background.
Mallory: Our mom’s from Paris, our dad’s from Muskegon. They met at Michigan State. Because they were both teachers, they had the summers off. So it worked out that, growing up, we spent three months of the year in France, and the other nine months in America. So we grew up with these two different cultural experiences.
With our family, food’s been a very important part of our lives. I think being able to experience France really informed the kind of business we wanted to be. We wanted to bring it back to Grand Rapids, our hometown.
Steven: So how is the American coffee experience different from the French?
Alyson: In the States, coffee tends to be very focused on work: you're going to work and picking up a coffee, having a meeting over coffee, etc. We wanted to create an atmosphere that was along the lines of the European style, where you're coming to enjoy.
Mallory: I think in France, when you have a coffee or a tea, that is your time to take a pause. There's a phrase in French called pause cafe, which is a pause in your day to take your coffee. We wanted to bring that kind of European mentality of rest, to create a third space for that.
Steven: Tell me a little bit about the food that you all make here. Chartreuse Sisters is a pâtisserie, not a bakery, which are two different things, right?
Mallory: There’s actually a few different types of French bakery. For croissants and other kinds of bread, you have a boulangerie. The Viennoiserie serves breakfast pastries, while a pâtisserie sells desserts, things like pain au chocolat. Currently we’re transitioning a bit from the traditional French pâtisserie and more into more whimsical, nostalgic kinds of food and beverage.
Alyson: It opens up the possibility for us to be more creative.
Steven: Speaking of creativity, tell me a little bit about the drinks and potions. I think this is the first place that I've seen serve potions.
Alyson: Potion Number 34 has been on the menu since day one. We knew we wanted to create an experience in some way, whether visually or through the flavor profiles, like introducing people to new things.
Like I said, I like mixology a lot. I try to stay up to date on what's popular and how people are experimenting. I came across butterfly pea flower tea, which has been popular in cocktails for a long time. It's a blue flower in nature and the color of the tea it makes is blue, but when you mix it with citrus or any kind of acid, it comes purple. That's the naturally magical potion part of it.
It was so popular that Potion Number 34 is still on the menu, and I’ve made other potions since then that have been super popular. It's very fun.
Steven: It’s clear that a lot of thought and planning went into your business. What did your education as entrepreneurs look like?
Alyson: There's a lot of work, a lot of time. I mean, you helped us a lot. [Laughs] A lot of it was us reaching out to people and just asking how we do this from the business side, because neither of us went to business school or culinary school. We had to learn how to set up a kitchen, how to set up our space to provide the experience we wanted.
Mallory: I think not having trained professionally had us looking outside the box in some ways. We weren't told, this is how you open a business, and this is what you should do and what you shouldn't do.
From the very beginning we knew this was going to be a micro business run by the two of us. And we're going to have very specific hours and products. I do wonder if we had gone to school, if we would have even thought we could do it this way, because it is different.
Steven: How would you say the food business has changed since you started?
Alyson: I think that there's a lot more small micro businesses, trying to open shops or doing pop ups. There's a pretty strong community. A lot of them have worked in the industry and wanted to start something on their own. So that's been really interesting, because it creates a nice collaborative energy. People and other businesses are more willing to wait for that pop up, show support, and post about it.
Mallory: We’re seeing people help each other out and seeing other people succeed. Since we started, there's been so many other places opening with specific hours and small teams. And the more those places open, the more we see the success and the excitement that Grand Rapids has for those small businesses. I feel like there's a shift happening.
Steven: It's interesting to hear you both talk about collaboration instead of competition.
Mallory: I think this new generation of entrepreneurs understands how we need to work together. We want to support each other. Everyone we're talking to wants to collaborate, rather than just compete.
*Image provided by Amanda Kamppinen
