Narrator: Every day, Ladurée makes tens of thousands
of macarons in pastry labs just like this one.
The company sells its colorful cookies across 30 countries.
But it all started here in Paris, with a macaron recipe
that hasn't changed for over 130 years.
Today, we dive into how Ladurée
went from inventing the double-decker macaron
to becoming a part of an estimated
billion-dollar cookie empire.
Today, there are over 110 Ladurée locations
in more than 50 cities worldwide.
The shops serve croissants
and a myriad of other French pastries.
But carrying the brand is the macaron,
rainbow in its shade and Parisian chic in its ethos.
So chic it costs about $3 per macaron,
a steep price driven by expensive ingredients
and a notoriously tricky baking process.
It all starts with California almonds.
We make the shells, the macaron shells, out of almonds,
whole almonds that we use that we grind ourselves
with icing sugar.
And then an Italian meringue, egg whites, and sugar syrup.
Narrator: If you're getting a macaron
from one of Ladurée's international locations,
it was made in Switzerland.
Ladurée says the macarons aren't frozen.
Instead, they're cooled
to what Ladurée calls a hibernation state
before being shipped globally.
But if you're in a shop in Paris or another French city,
those macarons are made every day
here at the Morangis lab outside of Paris.
And this is then baked for about 20 minutes.
Apart from that, we make the filling,
which can be a jam, a chocolate ganache, or a caramel.
And then we fill the macaron with that filling.
Then they rest for about eight hours to 24 hours
to get that nice, soft texture,
and then we ship them to the stores.
Narrator: The perfect macaron has a crunchy outer layer,
a soft inside, and just the right amount of filling.
If it's not perfect, it's tossed.
Guillaume: Two essential steps that we have here at Ladurée
is to get the right texture in the batter.
It is not too runny, not too stiff,
so the macaron gets that perfectly round shape.
Not too big, so then you can't put it in the boxes
and all that.
And then the second stage I was talking about
is that maturation process,
where it all comes together with the filling,
the shell that gets that nice texture.
Narrator: At the Morangis pastry lab,
chefs make 3,200 macarons a day
using a recipe that hasn't changed
since the cookie's invention in the late 1800s.
You can't write that down.
You can't just explain it with math.
It's literally just a skill that they've developed.
And they can tell.
They can look at it, they can tell if it's good or not.
They can taste it and tell you that
in two days, this macaron will be ready.
Narrator: What has changed are the flavors.
There are at least 20 mainstay flavors,
including rose, pistachio, and vanilla.
Ladurée's pastry chefs, like Guillaume,
are constantly developing new ones,
sometimes based on seasons,
like rose and cardamom for Mother's Day in Paris,
and other times based on location,
like the hemp macaron and a vegan line sold in Los Angeles.
Louis Ernest Ladurée founded his namesake bakery
off Rue Royale in Paris back in 1862.
But it was actually his cousin, Pierre Desfontaines,
who created the version of the macaron we know today
when he sandwiched two almond meringues
around chocolate ganache in the 1890s.
Pierre's idea was a hit
and was soon copied by patisseries across the city.
But it would take 135 years
for the original macaron company
to branch out into another location on the Champs-Elysees.
This expansion began after the Ladurée family
sold the brand to the Holder Group,
owners of the bakery chain Paul, in the 1990s.
The Holder Group repositioned Ladurée
as a high-end cookie house,
imitating luxury fashion houses.
In the late '90s, Ladurée introduced new macaron flavors
set to seasonal releases of fashion lines.
Then the colorful cookies showed up beside haute couture
in French Elle and Vogue.
And the rebranding worked.
Suddenly a symbol of luxury,
Ladurée went from selling 3,000 macarons a day
to 10,000 by 2002.
Soon, food and travel bloggers
began writing about the macaron,
cementing Ladurée as a travel destination
likened to the Eiffel Tower.
As Ladurée's global influence spread
with travelers and fashionistas, so did its macaron.
In 2005, Ladurée opened its first
international location in London,
then three years later, another in Japan.
In the US, the macaron's appearance
in the film "Marie Antoinette"
and the TV show "Gossip Girl"
popularized the cookie.
And in 2011, Ladurée opened its first US location
off Madison Avenue in New York City.
Today, Ladurée is the world's foremost provider
of the famous French macaron,
helping its parent conglomerate
reach $1 billion in revenue in 2018.
Because we make it for them, for our customers.
You go to Japan, and people tell you,
"Oh, it's so good, that thing I tried," whatever.
And you come back to Paris, they tell you the same thing.
And that's really touching.