L'Esthète - Save Time to Focus on Your Cooking
Discover the testimony of Julien Merceron, co-founder of l'Esthète, who cannot do without Melba to manage his knowledge and operations.
Julien Merceron, co-founder of L'esthète, gave us a few minutes of his precious time to come back with us on the history of the company, its offers, and also the beginning of the collaboration with Melba.
L'esthète - A Natural Pastry Chef
Julien has been a pastry chef, chocolate maker and ice cream maker for almost 20 years. For him, L'esthète is first and foremost the desire to create something with his partner Gérard.
Julien and Gérard love what is beautiful, what is good but also what is good for the planet. When you know that, the name "L'Esthète, naturellement pâtissier" makes sense. This project matured for 5 years and they have worked on it for a year and a half before opening in June 2019.
At L'Esthète, the focus is on appetite and short supply chain. From fresh pastries to viennoiseries, including a wide range of cookies made on site with special flours, nothing is left to chance. You will find a beautiful range of chocolates, delicatessen, but also a tea room to fully enjoy this experience.
For Julien, the evolution of l'Esthète is done naturally according to the customers' demands. For the future, all he wants is to continue to offer good quality products that please his customers.
Looking for a tool to calculate the costs of his preparations
For many years, Julien has had to calculate the costs of his preparations. When he created L'Esthète, he naturally started looking for a tool. When he came across Melba, he immediately found the right intuitive interface.
He uses Melba to write his articles, create his recipe databases and for all his orders. This last part is very important to him. It allows him to have a precise estimation of the total cost of his orders and to send it directly to his suppliers without risking any errors.
Julien is very interested in the new functionalities related to the nutritional values and the composition of the ingredients. He finds it essential to have a complete functional tool because there are many things to manage: from the basic items he orders, to the recipes that goes with it, or the ingredient labels, to sell the products in the store, already prepackaged.
Julien also finds it very practical to be able to calculate a cost price by having the possibility of integrating everything: from the sole that he will put under the cake, to the box or the bag reserved for the sale. He wants his cost price to be as close as possible to reality, which allows him to keep his margin. L'Esthète works with quality products and often more expensive, so they need to hold their margins, otherwise their profitability will collapse.
Save time to focus on the essentials
Now that he has maximum suppliers and items entered on the application, he can place his orders very quickly. When his delivery notes or his invoices arrive, he can check his purchase price against what he had entered and can therefore identify a change in the purchase price and correct it.
Julien even went to Melba to meet Hind, product manager at Melba. According to him, the developers are not in the field, so it's important to give them feedback so that they know what the professionals in the kitchen really want.
If he had to summarize the software in two words: constant evolution. For him it is a godsend because there is nothing worse than seeing a software that does not evolve. He thinks that one day, Melba will be like the dream application he could never have imagined.