Almost every week that Lindsay LaRouche set up at the Peterborough Farmers Market, her macarons sold out.
“People loved them,” she said. “So I knew they’d do well.”
It didn’t take long for her entrepreneurial way of thinking to kick in, realizing she might just have the start of a new business. But instead of the full-service bars and restaurants she owned and operated in Orlando, the Peterborough transplant was thinking simpler, more of a specialty shop.
“I always somehow knew I’d get back into it,” LaRouche said of the restaurant industry
Sweet Macarons opened in downtown Peterborough at 28 Grove St. in late January and so far business has been just like her Wednesdays at the farmers market, with very few macarons remaining at the end of the day.
“It’s a great problem to have,” LaRouche said.
LaRouche said she is making around 500 macarons a day, necessitating an order of bigger commercial equipment to increase production less than a week after opening.
“The goal is to close to double that, 800 to 1,000 per day,” she said.
She started off with 16 flavors, and while she recommends all of them, LaRouche said the top sellers so far have been the salted caramel and classic vanilla. But make sure to check out the rest of the display case as well, with flavors like raspberry, lemon meringue, espresso, mint chocolate, berry cheesecake and creamsicle.
LaRouche said the cookies are generally vanilla, although depending on the what she’s making, some ingredients are added to complete the desired flavor profile. She said they very labor intensive to get that crispy outer shell and soft inside.
She makes a French buttercream for the filling that LaRouche said is really the only way to capture the true essence of the traditional cookie.
“It just makes the macaroon,” she said. “It just adds a totally different flavor to it.”
The filling is also a long process, but LaRouche said it’s the attention to the details – and taste – that will keep customers coming back for more.
While a number of the flavors will be consistent, LaRouche said, the plan is to change up the selection, which a blackberry macaron in the development stage.
“There are ones that will always stay, staples you can’t get rid of,” LaRouche said.
All of her recipes came from researching macarons and figuring out what worked – and how she could make them better. And it might be hard to believe, but she’s only been making the classic French cookie for eight months. She loves macarons and always wanted to make them, so with less to do because of the coronavirus pandemic, she took to her kitchen.
“I was bored and decided to take a stab at them,” LaRouche said.
Then LaRouche tested it out at the farmers market and by October she had signed a lease for her Grove Street location.
“It’s slightly faster than normal people would do it,” LaRouche said. “But when I saw the space, I just pictured how it is now. It’s so cute. I’m obsessed with the location.”
Her husband Oliver did most of the build out, which was slowed a bit due to ever-evolving life during a pandemic, while Union Street Kitchens designed and decorated.
It’s been a bit of learning on the fly, but so far she hasn’t needed to worry about one important piece of the puzzle – sales.
She hopes to be able to ship orders in the future, once she can up production. And unfortunately for the Peterborough Farmers Market patrons, LaRouche doesn’t plan to be back this summer.
“I’m just trying to keep the bakery case filled right now,” she said.
Overall, so far, so good.
“This thing has been trial and error since the beginning,” she said.
While the hours might change, currently Sweet Macaron is open Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
For more, visit http://sweetmacaronnh.com/ and https://www.facebook.com/sweetmacaronpeterborough.
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