The Paris-Brest! A French-inspired pastry uniquely shaped like a bicycle wheel in honor of the bicycle race from Paris to Brest. We fill it on the spot with your choice of custard, as we do with our famous puffs. You can choose from Madagascar Vanilla Bean custard, Callebaut Belgian Chocolate custard, or Strawberries and whipped cream! If you've been a fan of our cream puffs, but wish they were a little softer, or moister- this is the perfect Beard Papa's product for you! It's also great for kids. =) We dust it off with some powdered sugar or cocoa powder, so it's not too rich! Fan of the eclair? Well, we can dip the Paris-Brest in our Belgian Dark Chocolate! YUM! You can purchase these individually OR why not grab a box to go on your way to work? 6pc, 12pc? You can always combine Paris-Brest with Cream Puffs too =)
Morning combos and promos will probably be put into play soon too.

SO STOP BY AND GET YOUR FIX =D

Hi readers! Sorry for the long hiatus-- there's hardly any ever time to write and update since the store has opened! We are so incredibly fortunate. The store's performance improves each week! The word is spreading about Beard Papa's Fresh 'N Natural Cream Puffs! YAY.

Biggest news to date? We were nominated by time out chicago for BEST SPECIALTY SHOP in the city for 2010! Crazy...we've only been open for 2 months! We feel so honored. =) Don't forget to go vote for us ;) We really appreciate the support we've been getting from our regulars, and customers who've been spreading the word.

THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO? We're working on expanding the availability of our products and have started the WEEKEND SPECIAL FLAVORS =) You, our customers, get to interact with us through our twitter account and vote for the flavor you want for the coming weekend! Pretty awesome, right? Last weekend's winner was Green Tea, and the weekend before that was Coffee...YUM. This week we're looking to get our Cheese Croissants out and hopefully more specialty cheesecakes: Tiramisu, perhaps? =) Customers usually get so upset when they hear not every single item on the menu is readily available to them. Our staff tries hard to explain that our top priority is our CREAM PUFFS. So, in the event it's busy and we have to bake the pastry shells non-stop-- there's no way to find some time to squeeze croissants or cheesecakes into the oven, and sacrafice a set of the shells >.<  Tiramisu cheesecake takes QUITE some time to make-- we're still looking to catch that break and have enough time to make it. We honestly can't complain that there isn't enough time though...it just means business is doing well and our foot-traffic is increasing =)

THINGS TO TRY? Best seller aside from our addicting cream puffs? The MOLTEN COOKIES! 4 of these delectable cookies for $2... sweet deal- yes? If you haven't tried them yet, YOU'RE MISSING OUT! You can usually find them by the register bagged ever-so-cutely and sealed with our Beard Papa label stickers =) I'm not a big chocolate fan myself, but these cookies are sooooo good! They're made with Dark Belgian Chocolate, so they're not too rich- be sure to pop them in the microwave for 8 seconds if you're taking them home. THEY'RE AMAZING WHEN THEY'RE HOT! I can usually be caught nibbling on extra cookies in the back hehe =P.

if you're a CHOCAHOLIC and not too fond of cookies you could give the FONDANT AU CHOCOLAT a try! It's a molten lava cake that we can serve to you a la mode, if you choose to sit down in the store, with a scoop of Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream on the side. OR you can take it to-go and heat it up in the microwave at home for 20 seconds or so =) AGAIN, we use the highest quality Dark Belgian Chocolate to make this tasty treat.

the Cafe Beard Papa -- it's our signature hot drink! We steam milk with REAL Madagascar Vanilla beans (the same we use for our best-of-the-best hand-mixed custards) and add two shots of illy dark roast espresso. It's our take on a latte, and we promise you, you won't be disappointed! We're looking to have a Cafe Beard Papa morning special-- Cream Puff and Cafe Beard Papa for $3.75? Something along those lines ... =P

Last, but certainly not least, the MANGO MILKBERRY,i blogged about this last time-- and finally the perfect weather for this refreshing drink is rolling around! It'll be selling fast, so please excuse us if we're out of the fresh fruits that you'd find at the bottom of your beverage.

 

SPEAKING OF WHICH-- look's like the sun's coming out in Chicago! HOORAY! Spring-time and then Summer-time is right around the corner! We're excited to have more people out-and-about, more stores opening in the Block37 complex, tons of events, and the opportunity to meet more of you and other sweet-tooths out there!

 

 Till next time...thank you for your continuous support. =)

Hello all, it's been a hot minute since we've blogged. Things have been so busy with the store- there hasn't been time! The holidays are over, and the workforce is back on route running through the red line and blue line. Needless to say, there is A LOT of foot traffic!
It's been a long couple of weeks and we finally found a breather to be able to update everyone!

The last few days leading up to the Grand Opening were toughest! Scrambling around the city finding supplies, finalizing paperwork with our providers, and seeing the last of our store put together. The most stressful part, hands-down, was waiting for the Health Department to pay their visit-- with the holidays right around the corner, it looked like no one would be able to make it out. Determined- Daishin took a taxi across town to get to the Health Dept. Offices minutes before they closed-- luckily he got them to agree to come out the next day! =D 
Without the stamp of approval, we could not stock food, and therefore could not fully train our staff-- so this was MAJOR for us.

As soon as we got the go signal, we called all our providers to get our deliveries sent our way and went full steam ahead in the little time span we had to train our workers. Teaching them how to work the register, taking them through the motions of baking, operating ovens and espresso machines. Despite all this, there is no amount of training that could have prepared them for the mass amounts of people that came through our doors the first day. Eddy, Daishin and I had only 2hours of sleep because I had flown in around 1am! So waking up at 345AM was more than brutal for us. We got ready in a flash, and trudged out in the snow to our zipcar and started loading it up with appliances we had kept at our place and other essentials we needed to survive the day =P  Although i thoroughly enjoy the snowfall, i must admit, i felt terrible for Eddy who had to keep driving through it almost 75% of the day picking up our last minute supplies and running back and forth from the bank to the store about 21820430947203948 times! That's exaggerated, but gosh did it feel like it!  Daishin and I arrive at Block37, ran down the escalator that was running in the opposite direction, haha, and reached the store to find our openers for the morning ready to work, like real troopers =P  We were scheduled to open at 12- so we used those last crucial hours to make everything look spic and span, and start preparing endless amounts of our freshly baked choux pastry shells, and our famous Madagascar vanilla bean custard, Belgian Callebaut milk AND dark chocolate custard, and our fresh and light Strawberries and whipped cream. Our second troop came in at 10a, and it was GO TIME- time to hit the ground running. Time to crank out that custard and start dipping a million dark chocolate eclairs! We had 2 people breaking the giant dark chocolate bars&milk chocolate bars, 2 people with me in the back learning how to make the custard, and everyone else either baking and prepping dough, cutting strawberries, preparing the cookie dough for our cookie shells, washing dishes, or preparing the front workspace. So many people in the store at one time- and yet EVERY SINGLE PERSON WAS DOING SOMETHING. talk about being proactive and efficient =P

Doors open at 12, and BAM. so it begins...a line out the door and our troops working extra hard. Daishin and I in the front and Eddy supervising in the back-- we had our assembly line ready to go- for the most part. Like I stated earlier, nothing can prepare new workers for the overwhelming masses of anxious first-timers, so there were some parts where Daishin and I had to jump in there and send the assembly line of 5? to go do something else. Being long-time veterans really helps in the face of "chaos" =P. Our 3rd and final troop arrives at 2pm and things pick up EVEN MORE! We had our yummy molten double-chocolate cookies out on display, our 8 different mochi ice cream flavors in the display case, our delicious Illy Coffees, Haagen-Dazs smoothies and milkshakes and of course, the CREAM PUFFS. There was A LOT to do, thank goodness we had the workforce to do it all.

This trend has kept up for the past 3 weeks we have had our doors open and welcoming to by-passers and we are more than happy to say, with everyone back to work and school- things have been even busier. Going into our 4th week, we have now introduced more of our savory desserts- cheescakes, fondants, and mini croissants- this week? Our MANGO MILKBERRY, which we promise will be your newest addiction!

We thank everyone who has stopped by and continue to return, we thank our faithful twitter followers for their support and spreading the word, our families&loved ones for their support and putting up with our CRAZY,busy and hectic schedules, and our future regulars to come! We hope to see you soon.

Till next time...

 

Sp we spoke to our contractors this morning, now they're telling us we'll be looking at the December10-Dec13 Weekend as the finishing date for the store's construction! So we should be opening the week after. And with that in mind, it's getting down to crunch time for us to find staff and start the training process! We've had about 289 inquiries, and about 50-something actual interviews! We're going on our third day of meeting with eager, potential applicants. A strong, dependable staff is so essential to our business--without a good staff, how will our store operate and run successfully! Initially, we were holding our interviews at the ING Direct Cafe off of Chestnut. We figured we were there so much we might as well hold the interviews there too- especially since we had no facilities to do so. However, we did not know we had to communicate this with the ING staff, and we ended up getting in trouble with the Supervisor/Manager. Ehh... so we went with "Plan B" for today's Round3-- STARBUCKS!  When all else fails, find the nearest Starbucks. =)
Out of our many, many applicants, we're confident that we've found our staff. Hopefully we can get back to everyone by Sunday, we've got a few interviews left-- and then we can start figuring out the training processes and such.

On another note, we've been doing our research with the best suppliers in town for the best of the best ingredients for our products! We went ahead and narrowed it down, and we're now in the test sampling stage for essential ingredients for our Specialty Tiramisu Cheesecake and Rare Fruit Cheesecake! We'll let you guys know how it goes. =)

 

Here are some more pictures from the depths of Block37.  I took these pictures a few days ago, but as you can see, there's still a lot of work to be done with the mall!  Most of the scaffolding is off at the site now though, and Freed is confidant they can open up the center to the public on November 20th. 

In terms of our space, we're still waiting for our air handler unit and the storefront to arrive.  Of course, both of these are HUGE pieces of our store, so hopefully they arrive as scheduled on the 12th!  We're making a huge push to open by the 20th as well, but things are really, really tight...  Stay tuned!

Here's a lovely picture of our back wall, and as you can see, construction has started!  It actually started a few days ago, but it sounds better if I pretend it just started =)  The plumbing and electrical work on the walls are done, so it's time to drywall the walls and finish up the ceiling.  Many more pictures coming your way!

The 4' x 12' crate from Panelite has arrived and in it lies the future of Beard Papa's in Chicago.  If you can see in the picture, the crate has "handle with care" discretely burnt into one of the sides.  Panelite should have had this in 300pt font, BOLD, underlined, italicized and in red!!!! 

As mentioned in a previous post (http://beardpapa.posterous.com/the-beard-papas-box), we will be constructing a Beard Papa's box with these translucent sheets with the hope of bringing the Beard Papa culture to the Windy City.  With these panels we believe we will be able to successfully achieve an abstract Beard Papa box that at first glance will be looked at with curiosity and after a few more glances at different angles, it will all come together and the concept would be understood.

Hopefully, this box will dual as a marketing tool to help welcome curious onlookers to step into the store and see what we're all about!

In the next few days we will begin the cutting, assembly and aluminum metal extrusion work for the box and after that, off to Chicago!