Photo by Caitlin Abrams
cooks bellecour
From left, Gavin Kaysen, Karl Benson, and Marie Dwyer celebrate the new Cooks Bellecour in Edina.
Remember how grating the phrase We’re all in it together became during the pandemic? At first inspiring in dark and fearful days, the rallying cry became a bit cloying when we suddenly felt trapped in our spaces. And when others started to break away from our rigorous societal hug, sometimes it felt like an empty shout down a long hallway.
Well, I consider this full circle, because as it turns out, some of the best ideas and evolutions have come out of that very sentiment. It’s more than collaboration, which for years had been an easy concept for us northerners, because that’s more akin to I like your stuff, you like my stuff; let’s do stuff together! This feels different. This new synergy comes from something more substantial, less about aesthetic wants and more about realizing you might need to expect the unexpected—You need this, I need that; let’s find a way forward together. Boiled down: the win-win.
A great example of this is the pandemic partnership that has given life to the new Cooks Bellecour. Just before everything shuttered in 2020, Karl Benson and Marie Dwyer were running the newest Cooks of Crocus Hill in the North Loop at a brisk pace. “Our cooking class attendance had never been better. We were booked all the time,” Dwyer recalls. But when the restrictions landed, they would not be allowed to hold classes for quite some time. And while the kitchenwares side of the store found many new customers who were looking to stack their home kitchens, the half with the cooking school sat empty.
At the same time, Gavin Kaysen had been forced to shutter his Wayzata Frenchy known as Bellecour. He wanted to keep his talented bakers employed and was trying to figure out how to make it work from the Spoon and Stable kitchens when Karl and Marie from across the street showed up. Kaysen needed kitchen space; they had it. They needed to bring business in to replace cooking school revenue; he had legendary chocolate croissants. The match made sense—so much sense that it became more than a Band-Aid in hard times; it became a smart business model.
After the initial installation of Bellecour Bakery in the North Loop shop, they brought a version to the OG Cooks of Crocus Hill location in St. Paul in 2021. It was a test to see if it could work in a different neighborhood, with daily delivery of bakery items from North Loop. Boy, did it. It worked so well that they have now changed everything to fit this new model, even the name of the company.
Going forward, all the stores will be known as Cooks Bellecour, and the newest Edina location is the prototype that isn’t just a bakery smashed into a kitchen store. “A decade ago” Benson told me while we toured the new space, “there were 900 independent specialty retail stores like ours in the country. Last count was 375. We had to find something to stay relevant, and now we have someting totally unique in the country.” The shiny new space has retail, cooking class space, and a bakery café with sweet and savory offerings, plus seating.
“With this one, the bakery items will come from the North Loop kitchen frozen, so we’ll bake them off fresh each morning,” Kaysen noted. “That should give this neighborhood a really nice scent, like cardamom buns. Savory will be produced on-site.” Obviously this all tests quality and acts as proof for more locations farther away.
Cooks Bellecour is separate from Kaysen’s Soigné Hospitality collection, which includes Spoon and Stable, Demi, Spoon Thief Catering, and his restaurants in the Four Seasons. And maybe that’s the real win-win for restaurants: diversification. More eggs in more baskets.
You can see the diversification win-winning on different scales in new places that are bubbling up in the restaurant industry. Kruse Markit might be able to take a shot at selling higher-end carrot-butter boards because it also has a sure thing in its grocery case: Heggies Pizza. The kitchen team from Herbst Eatery knew that they needed great ingredients to stand out, so they pulled together a team of young farmers to boost their menu. They don’t need to take a gamble at running an unpredictable lunch service to survive when they can have a grab-and-go section made with those fresh ingredients in the farm stand next door. The farmers now have a dedicated place in the city to sell their crops. There’s so much winning!
Maybe, in the end, we can hope that the pandemic taught the industry something more than just how to navigate trauma. I’m hoping we’ve learned not only that no one can go it alone but also that we can be more successful and move forward bigger and better (with more stability) when we’re all in it together.
