Laurent Duvernay-Tardif officially announced his retirement from professional football last September, but he has just propelled his brand new career as an entrepreneur by opening a fourth bakery Le pain dans les voiles, in Blainville, and candidly admits to loving this new passion that he intends to cultivate in parallel with the practice of medicine.
Last Saturday, at 9:30 a.m., people kept flocking to the Le pain dans les voiles bakery which had just opened its doors two days earlier, on Curé-Labelle Boulevard in Blainville.
“It’s sick, for three days we have been recording a volume that is 50% higher than that of our bakery in the Villeray district of Montreal, which nevertheless has the highest traffic of our three bakeries,” notes Laurent with astonishment and relief. Duvernay-Tardif.
A customer with his young child stops to greet the imposing offensive lineman. “We came yesterday and we’re coming back today. It’s good, what you’re doing, I think we’re becoming addicted,” confesses the young father before giving way to his son who asks the owner of the place for an autograph.
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Laurent Duvernay-Tardif in the bakery with the team
The bakery was not included in the game plan of Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, who already had his hands full with his career as a footballer and doctor in training.
His parents – both agronomists – sold their orchard and vineyard in 2006 to take a year-long sailing trip with Laurent, 15, and his two sisters. The parents decided in 2009 to open a bakery, to swap wine for bread, grapes for wheat, while retaining the sacred principles of agriculture and fermentation.
The Duvernay-Tardif couple opened a first bakery in Mont-Saint-Hilaire, a second, in 2012, in Villeray and a third in Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, in 2018.
In 2021, my parents decided to move on and sell their business. They offered it to me and I immediately accepted, even though it was not at all planned. I had football and medicine to deal with.
Laurent Duvernay-Tardif
Two and a half years later, he believes that this overactivity was ultimately beneficial, because the urgency of the opportunity forced him to delegate and review all business processes.
“I was far away and I couldn’t micromanage. I teamed up with my lifelong friend and agent Sasha Ghavami and we bought the bakeries, incorporating in each of them a partner manager and a master baker as shareholders.
“I kept this more macro management mode; my role is to have the vision and to understand customer perceptions and to see to development,” explains the neo-baker.
A first test
The opening of a fourth bakery Le pain dans les voiles in Blainville is the first milestone in a sequence that Laurent Duvernay-Tardif and his partner Sasha Ghavami wish to continue.
“This is our first real test. We chose the site, we supervised the construction, we negotiated with the bank, we sought permits from the City. I loved doing that. We chose Blainville for demographic reasons, it takes a somewhat epicurean population, with families. »
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Laurent Duvernay-Tardif
If things work well here, we plan to open six other bakeries within five years. We do not open franchises, the bakeries belong to us with our partners on site.
Laurent Duvernay-Tardif
“We have the same concept in each of the establishments. With a range of obligatory products, another secondary and finally another creative one where each bakery can offer its own types of bread,” explains the main shareholder.
What differentiates the products of Le pain dans les voiles bakeries is the concern that the Duvernay-Tardif parents developed to choose wheat specifically designed for them.
“My parents are agronomists, they chose local producers to raise very specific types of wheat. We know which wheat was used to make each loaf. We have a producer in Saint-Marc-sur-Richelieu, the Agri-Vallée farm, which only grows 200 tonnes of organic wheat for us each year. We are working on health products,” explains Laurent Duvernay-Tardif.
Le pain dans les voiles flours are also marketed and used by other Quebec artisanal bakeries and they are manufactured by the Moulins de Soulanges in Montérégie and the Moulin de Charlevoix.
The company will use 750 tonnes this year to supply its four bakeries, only 100% Quebec flour.
The former American football player, who became a doctor during his professional career, took a year off to be able to make the transition between his former life as an athlete and his career as a doctor. Next April, he will resume his residency in family medicine at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, a stage he plans to complete in 18 months.
“I have enrolled in the Masters of Public Health and plan to devote half my time to family medicine and the other half to public health using the experience I gained in football to promote health,” anticipates the entrepreneur-doctor.