BUSINESS - STÉPHANIE JAUQUET

Stéphanie Jauquet won Banque internationale à Luxembourg’s Business Woman of the Year award in 2019

“Human beings adapt and find solutions”

Stéphanie Jauquet, owner of Cocottes, Um Plateau and La Baraque, has made the most of a difficult satiation during the pandemic, opening new stores while maintaining her sustainable business model.

Interview TEODOR GEORGIEV Photos GUY WOLFF

Your Cocottes eateries showed impressive growth during the pandemic, but you had to adapt, offering a delivery option which you maintain today and proved important for business during lockdown. What helped you turn this challenge into an opportunity? When the pandemic began in March 2020, we had to react, as there was nobody left in the office buildings. What hurt us the most was that people were teleworking and staying at home.

Luckily, the prime minister [Xavier Bettel] said that boutiques like ours could stay open, but we had no customers. At first, I was stupefied, and I wondered what we [were] going to do and if we were heading towards a disaster because we don’t have any customers. Then, as an owner, whether you’re in a crisis or not, you have to make decisions. We advertised in a couple of the big media to say that we are delivering. So we started going to the four corners of the country to deliver to people’s homes every day.

The second part that was complicated was that nobody knew the nature of the virus and how dangerous it was. There were two types of employees on my teams. All the cooks in the workshops felt protected. All year round they work with masks for food hygiene anyway, so it didn’t make any difference to them, and they were all at work. But in the bistros, the shop assistants were afraid. I had to close the shops because I had no more sales staff, and I didn’t want to force them to work--and I didn’t want to cause them any stress. It was only those who volunteered who kept the shops open. We had to put some of the other teams then on reduced working hours. But I have to say that it lasted a

THE EVOLUTION OF COCOTTES

2014 The first Cocottes eatery opens in the Cloche d’Or shopping centre.

2016 Jauquet opens an eatery near Glacis square in Luxembourg City.

2018 Three new eateries open in Gasperich, City Concorde shopping centre and Luxembourg City.

2020 With establishments forced to close, Cocottes begins offering delivery service. Three new eateries open in Leudelange, Belle Etoile and Nordstrooss shopping centre.

2021 Jauquet collaborates with Pascal Carré, owner of La Cave des Sommeliers, to open Wine Not?, blending Cocottes’ dishes with a wine selection. month, or a month and a half. And then, as with every crisis, every disaster, human beings adapt and find solutions and live with the virus, and with the stress. People gradually came back to the offices only to leave again after a few months.

In the end we adapted, we changed what we offered a bit. As the restaurants were closed, we went on to make our range of ready-made dishes, which were a little more elaborate. So the positive thing about this crisis, which I lived through with a lot of stress, is the experience I gained as an entrepreneur. We also became known as a ‘traiteur’ [offering takeaway service] because people knew us as a place [where] they can take their lunch break. We were not known for offering meals that people then bring to their houses when they have guests and, due to the crisis, we were able to make ourselves known for that. We did not have layoffs either, and that had been one of my biggest fears--having to let staff go. So we continued to open shops during the pandemic. I can’t lie--there were certain opportunities because, unfortunately, some shops didn’t survive, and there were available slots.

My strategy of setting up shops in office areas also helped. At lunchtime, people don’t walk for half an hour to buy a salad; they eat at the foot of their building. The office buildings were empty, but the shopping centres were always open. People were still going there to do their

shopping wearing gloves and masks, so there’s always a flow in shopping centres. And that’s why the last shops I opened were always in shopping centres.

How do you look back on your experience in horeca, having started very young and now being an owner? Since the age of 15-16, I worked in the restaurant business, but that was a student job after school, on weekends, holidays, school holidays. I worked for 10 years in a hotel-restaurant because it was my passion. I started as a dishwasher, then as a head waitress and finally, when the bosses went on holiday, they gave me the keys to the establishment, and I kept it running for the two or three weeks they were on holiday. Then, because I dreamt of having my own establishment one day, I had to leave them and make it on my own.

Having started at the bottom of the ladder, did you find it difficult as a woman to make the transition from employee to manager and then to owner in the horeca [hotel, restaurant, café] sector? This is a very trendy question nowadays. I never understood why people ask this question because I never felt different from a man, and I have never thought that it would be more complicated because I was a woman. Maybe this applies more in everyday life. But I haven’t encountered difficulties that were linked to gender. I’ve developed myself in a rather masculine world because chefs are often men, my cooks are men. I’ve never seen a problem, even at the beginning of my career. I am surrounded by more male friends than female ones.

In 2019, when you won the Luxembourg Business Woman of the Year award, you said, ‘Tonight we have all won’, adding that you are confident that you can work together with the other nominated business owners. Is there unity among women entrepreneurs in Luxembourg, and have you already collaborated with the other winners? I have admiration for Christianne Wickler who works at Pall Center. At the very beginning of my journey as an entrepreneur, I contacted her and invited her for a coffee, and I shared some of my worries on being able to set up a restaurant. IN NUMBERS

Jauquet’s businesses There are a total of 17 Cocottes eateries in Luxembourg and one production site. Jauquet is also the owner of restaurants Tempo and Um Plateau. The fry stand La Baraque opened in Luxembourg City on 30 July 2021.

Cocottes’ 2021 highlights

110,000 clients per month

4 new stores

90 new employees hired

32 employees promoted

Ingredients used in 2021

47,470l cream

28,000l milk

30t flour from Luxembourg mills

6,352kg Luxembourg beef

15t Luxembourg potatoes

9t chocolate She answered some of the questions I had. And we still stay in touch. It has been maybe seven or eight years, and we write each other from time to time. Then, all the feminist roundtables of business leaders it’s like the business woman award --it can be an entrepreneurship or a business prize, who is on the podium--a man or a woman--doesn’t really matter.

You have worked with Pascal Carré from La Cave des Sommeliers as well as your architect Véronique Witmeur for a long time. How important are partnerships in your line for work? At the beginning, these were friendships. When I started in the restaurant business, nobody knew me here in Luxembourg. I had no ties, and I wanted to make my dream of having my own restaurant a reality. But I found myself with a project that was very big. I didn’t have much financial means at the time, and I had to ask for help from banks, but that wasn’t enough.

Once I was able to open my own restaurant, partners like Pascal Carré put their trust in me. He supplied me with a stock of wine and told me [to] pay him when I can. Some of my former clients from my old job had seen the distress I was in due to the size of the project and offered to partner up with me. I am very loyal to those people, and they are still part of my inner circle. I am very loyal in my friendships and especially to the people who were there when no one knew me, who trusted me, who either lent me money or gave me a helping hand. I can never thank them enough for everything they did, so I remain faithful.

Véronique is also someone whose work I love, and now she works almost exclusively for Cocottes. I follow my projects out of passion, and I want to be dazzled by what is proposed to me, whether it is furniture, technical equipment or a product. That’s what motivates me. It’s not a box to tick in a budget, saying this will cost you that much and will bring you that much.

You give the impression that you rely a lot on your team, and you put them forward on your social media profiles. Your Instagram posts often feature photos of your employees with a few words from them. Is it more difficult to maintain this family spirit as your company is growing?

The Cocottes chefs have recently started to regularly test new recipes--a practice introduced by Jauquet to improve the range of dishes.

It is not more difficult. I believe that we are in a line of business where it is important to be nice to customers, to be polite, to be able to answer questions. But also that if there is an employee who comes to work every morning and is not happy to be there, they won’t do a good job. First of all, they have to feel good about their job, they have to feel that they are being paid properly, that there are good products to sell. That’s the basis for me.

And it’s a big family. My first sales[people] are now shop managers. I trained them myself, then they took over. They know the values of Cocottes, and they pass them on. I try to be there as much as possible in my shops. But I can no longer go and train people, and it’s clear that I’ve lost a little bit the privilege of that contact with my teams. I still have it with my managers. But they pass on information, and we communicate a lot. We have an internal newsletter, and there is a lot of internal communication. We have to keep this link because there are 18 different sites. We haven’t had a get-together at the end of the year twice in a row now, so a big celebration with all the Cocottes employees is something we all look forward to.

How have the preferences of employees in the horeca sector changed in recent years? The job that has changed the most is the restaurant service which is different from what we do at Cocottes where we have daytime hours. The classic restaurant business has evolved so much in 30 years. It was borderline exploitation 30 years ago, and now you can run a restaurant with employees who work 40 hours a week. It’s really complicated to recruit staff and to have motivated people.

I think those of us who work in horeca will have to find solutions to make our employees more comfortable but also to ensure that it is viable, so the customer doesn’t end up paying €25 for a meal because we have to hire two teams.

The new logo and new staff uniforms, as well as your presence on social networks, has brought Cocottes success. Is it just as important for a restaurant to get its message across as it is for it to offer quality food? You need both. It’s an entire package when it comes to horeca. In Cocottes we focus on the quality of the products, the service, the look of the shop and the flexibility to be able to work at lunchtime or when having a coffee. The change of the staff’s

uniforms was very important to me because I care about the well-being of my employees. They all had the same clothes before, which suited some people very well but did not suit others at all. We made an entire collection of clothes that was more adapted to the body type of each person, and then each employee could choose what they wanted to wear. We pick something we like, and we go to work every morning with an outfit we like.

The logo reflects my desire to evolve my projects all the time, to keep making sure that the logo is still in style. Seven years ago, we simply removed the word ‘fresh’ because for us it was logical that our food was fresh. Changing the blue chicken logo to black was for ecological reasons. We switched to recycled paper packaging, and the blue meant using more ink, so it was less environment-friendly.

Where does your desire to run an eco-responsible business come from? It was already in my nature because I grew up in the countryside. We had our own vegetable garden; we ate local produce, seasonal fruit. It was already something I knew. We were picking mushrooms; we were making jam with fruit from the garden.

It’s also something that is expected of us. Of course, we don’t have solutions for everything. We have eco-friendly packaging, but the customer also wants to see what they are buying. We are stuck with plastic packaging and glass. All the plastics we work with are recycled and recyclable, which are the least harmful to the planet. When it comes to wine, I don’t see the point in offering Australian or Californian wine when we have European [ones]. But for other products, you don’t have a choice--when the customer wants raspberries all year round, we have to make some exceptions.

With 20 years of experience in horeca, was the pandemic the most difficult period for you as a business owner? In terms of external events, yes, it was the most difficult time I’ve had. However, my first steps in the restaurant business and all the difficulties in getting started, as well as the mountains of debt, were also hard. I struggled for five years, and I didn’t take a salary for myself. It was difficult, morally exhausting and discouraging.

In the beginning of the health crisis, every press conference, we were in front of the computer, wondering what will happen next. Then we had to shut down establishments. There were also employees who called me, who had no family in Luxembourg and who were isolated and getting depressed in their homes. Sometimes I would say to them, come to Cocottes, come for a few hours, masked-up and everything. People were really getting affected by the isolation. Other than that, I don’t remember another crisis of this size.

Your other project--La Baraque, serving Belgian-style fries--opened last summer. Was this a way to bring something from your country to Luxembourg? I wondered many times why there were no fry stands in Luxembourg city. I thought it was probably due to the price of rent and fries being a very expensive ingredient. Then my nephew--who comes to work for me from time to time and who has just turned 18--told me he wanted to open one someday. So I stole his idea a little bit and told him that the project is now set up, and all he has to do is come work with me when he finishes his studies.

And then there is the challenge of starting something new. It’s so fulfilling and enriching to work on a concept, to think about a name, brainstorming the logo or the menu. When we open a Cocottes, it’s a copy-paste, except for the decoration, but my part of the work is the same as what we’ve already done. In that case it’s only the architect who can enjoy some freedom.

With La Baraque it was a process of starting all over again, and it was really enriching. There wasn’t the pressure of having to depend financially on that project. We treated it as if it were a Cocottes shop and told ourselves we were going to have fun, and I love the end result.

So the creative process of setting up a new project is something that brings the best out of you? Yes, me and a friend of mine who is also in the horeca business are going to revamp a 2500m2 space at La Belle Etoile which is the former location of the C-Inn restaurant. It’s in the process of construction at the moment, and everything is torn apart. We decided to juxtapose all our brands and to create a restaurant space with a Cocottes, a fry stand, a café,

“I can’t lie--there were certain opportunities because, unfortunately, some shops didn’t survive”

a bar. It will be very lively. We are doing this project as friends, and it’s new and big, so it brings us back to the stage of coming up with new ideas. For example, one thing that has evolved during the pandemic is that we no longer use paper for anything, it’s all digital.

With digitalisation, how do you see the horeca sector evolving? I hope that we don’t stop seeing staff in the dining areas or no more cashiers but rather customers finding themselves in front of machines. I think, in horeca, people will look for a source of relaxation, a place to meet people and talk to people. I hope it remains that way.

We also have to evolve with the technology of our time. Writing the order on a piece of paper and the bill in a notebook is archaic. It’s not my generation’s trait to be connected all the time to a phone. I only do it for my emails, but my future clients will be that way. If we don’t adapt to their way of functioning, we’ll become obsolete.