GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — A café and dry bar created by two sisters held a Grand Opening on Wealthy Street today.
Sisters Mallory and Alyson Caillaud-Jones wanted to honor their French-American roots with a place for fusion drinks and pastries. They decided to call it Chartreuse Sisters.
Three years in the making, the two finally opened the doors to their dream café Saturday afternoon to a crowd of people — they nearly sold out within the first two hours.
"It's very surreal to be actually here. It's been about three years, and it's just incredible to see the line around the block — it's validating," Mallory said.
The sisters got their love of French-American cuisine from their parents. Their dad was a teacher in Muskegon, and their mom moved to West Michigan from France to teach. The two got married, and took their daughters on trips to France every summer.
Both sisters went to school for different things, but found their true passion years later.
"This is what we were meant to do, this just makes sense," Mallory said.
The idea for the business began with Alyson, who always wanted to be a bartender and a barista. She said she would only start a business if her sister, who is a talented baker, joined in.
They took three years to figure out the behind-the-scenes portion of the business before they scouted locations, including one at 800 Wealthy Street.
"We grew up in Eastown, so we saw this building just shuttered for our entire lives, and we were just really interested in what was inside of it," Mallory said.
"We saw the original ceiling and floor and it just sang patisserie to us," she said. "This was the style we wanted anyways, and we didn't have to recreate this, we just had to put up walls."
The sisters want Chartreuse to be as close to a French patisserie as possible, with the same bases for pastries and drinks every month, but changing flavors based on what's in-season.
They also specialize in non-alcoholic spirits that give it a very similar taste to a cocktail, because they found a lack of non-alcoholic options in the area.
"It's scary going into business, we don't have a huge financial background. It's really all our money," Mallory explained. "But, we've had so much support this whole time that we've felt that it was going to be successful. Today is really showing that it is going to be successful."
"It gives us a lot of hope, a lot of stress is relieved, just knowing that there is this amount of demand," she said.
The perfect example of their fusion cuisine is their financier cake, a dessert that typically stands alone, but they pair it with a buttercream frosting and filling to emulate an American cupcake. They look forward to selling more in the future, once they have time to restock their inventory.
But Mallory's top recommendation? Their eclairs.
"Eclairs are something that don't really exist in Grand Rapids right now. They're my all-time favorite pastry," she said.
"Eclair is actually named after lightning because they go so quickly. People love them so much that they just immediately get eaten up."
This was true for Saturday's opening, as eclairs were eaten faster than Mallory and her team could bake them fresh.
"When you have a job that is physically demanding, it can take a lot out of you, but at the end of the day, if you're still very happy and excited, then I think you've figured out what makes you happy and what's your passion, and definitely that's happening for us right now," Mallory said.
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