Recently, I dropped by a La Boulange café (owned and operated by Starbucks). Most customers have seen La Boulange treats inside of Starbucks, but I thought it would be fun to see the home of all its inspiration and an actual La Boulange Café. I dropped by the café at 151 University Avenue, in Palo Alto, California on May 25, 2014.
And La Boulange has recently been in the news as Starbucks has announced plans to expand the La Boulange Café concept into a dinner concept offering burgers. There’s already an Instagram profile for the La Boulange Cafe and you can see pictures of the burgers they’ll be serving. It made me very hungry just looking at them! (It also made me sad that we won’t have these in Seattle. We could at least use an In-N-Out Burger in Seattle, pretty please.) What do you think of their expanded cafe concept?
The actual La Boulange cafes sell an amazing variety of bakery items, breakfast and lunch foods, as well as even La Boulange potato chips and dish towels! One partner mentioned to me that the Macaron cookies are her favorites and ever-popular.
I arrived late morning and so I opted for a breakfast item – French toast. My French toast came with Vermont maple syrup and a side of fresh fruit too. The French toast was very light and fluffy and a delicious breakfast. After I finished breakfast, I stocked up on cookies and La Boulange jam to take home with me to Seattle. There is a La Boulange card which can be registered and used as a Starbucks card, but they were out when I arrived. My understanding is that there are currently two designs of La Boulange cards. One is solid blue with the word La Boulange on it: the blue one does NOT have the ability to be registered as a Starbucks card. There’s one that is orange with the word La Boulange on it, and I think that one does have the ability to be registered as a Starbucks card. I know the blue ones don’t because I got one, tried to register it, and discovered that it’s not compatible with Starbucks.
One more interesting thing is that La Boulange seems to have their own grant foundation, giving money to non-profit organizations within any neighborhood with a La Boulange Cafe. I included an image of the La Boulange Community Grants too.
You can follow La Boulange on Twitter here.
I took all the photos below on Sunday, May 25, 2014. As always, do not use without permission.
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One of you pictures show what appears to be 2 microwave ovens. Do you know what they’re used for?
@Annalie – Good question. I didn’t ask. I would assume that they may have syrups and sauces that they throw in the microwave to serve warmed.
Interesting direction SB is taking and wonder how far they will expand these cafes? Just out of curiosity where on University Ave is this cafe? I also wonder why one card would be compatible with SB rewards and not the other?
We visited a La Boulange in San Francisco last year and I was very impressed with the wide range of products! Would love it if we were able to get the La Boulange baked goods in the UK/Ireland!
Looks great. But the pictured pastries look very little like the ones in little plastic bags that say La Boulange on them here in Chicago. Maybe it’s just not possible to not lose something when you scale something up to the level that Starbucks needs.
I’ve been so disappointed in the new pastries that I rarely get them. I got a cookie today & I really didn’t like it at all. 🙁 I wouldn’t get the burgers since I’m vegetarian.
@Purple1 – I’ve been meaning to answer your question but not able to get to a computer earlier.
The blue La Boulange cards are the store merchandise credit cards. From what I gathered, La Boulange had a system where the registers took these cards as a form of payment, before they were even bought out by Starbucks. Since they pre-date the Starbucks system, or at least were only designed for the La Boulange registers, they are not compatible with the app and Starbucks.com cards. I’m not sure I’ve got that perfect, but basically those cards pre-date Starbucks’ decision to create a Starbucks La Boulange card that would be compatible with the Starbucks system of cards.
The orange cards are more recent and were designed to be a Starbucks card: you can register them and everything.
I hate being stranded in the middle of the country. None of the interesting stuff happens in Texas! I would love to get one of the La Boulange cards. This store looks beautiful! So jealous you got to go.
That French toast looks delicious. I can only imagine how great a hamburger would taste on that croissant they use for the roasted ham and swiss sandwich at SBUX. (Now I’m hungry!)
WOW this looks great, my only sadness is that La Boulange will not launch in Canada until December at the earliest…I love their simple ingredient structure and real butter based baked goods. I know there’s mixed reactions to the food but we need to get away from artificial and modified ingredients. How’s the jam?