DB: How has Napoleon Bakery merged French cuisine with Chinese culture?
请问拿破仑面包店是如何把法国菜和中国文化融合在一起的？
Firstly, we merged the name of the bakery in the Chinese culture. The majority of the Chinese only know of 3 French persons: Zinedine Zidane the soccer player, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Napoleon Bonaparte. And because we felt the first two names would have been too obscure, we chose Napoleon so the Chinese could easily identify our bakery as French. Also, Napoleon is the name of a famous French cake Mille Feuille. Moreover, we had to make several adjustments in our products in order to get a good reputation. The key adjustment we had to do with the sweetness of our breads/cakes – Chinese don’t like too sweet so we nearly cut half of the sugar from our French recipes, and sometimes it is still too sweet for some customers! Additionally, chocolate products are not as popular as they are in Western countries. Still parents let their children eat junk food all the time, but they consider chocolate devilish and harmful to their children’s bodies. Another tricky point was the dryness of the bread. Chinese prefer a soft bread as opposed to a typical French wheat bread, so in order to satisfy all customers, we have different level of dryness in our bread. Also, locals love new products, so Napoleon bakery creates a couple of new breads every month.
首先，我们把面包店的名称融进了中国文化中。大多数中国人只知道3名法国人：Zinedine Zidane是足球运动员，前法国总统尼古拉·萨科奇和拿破仑·波拿巴。我们觉得前两个名字人们有点生疏，所以我们选择了拿破仑。这样一来，中国人很容易辨认出我们的面包店是法国的。而拿破仑也是法国着名的蛋糕Mille Feuille的名字。此外，为了获得良好的声誉，我们必须对产品进行多项调整。最关键的是对我们面包/蛋糕的甜度做出调整 – 中国人不喜欢太甜的，所以我们几乎从法国食谱中减去了一半的糖量，不过对于一些客户来说，这仍然太甜了！此外，和在西方国家一样，巧克力也并不是很成功，父母们认为巧克力对孩子的身体健康有害，却还是让孩子们一直吃垃圾食品。另一个棘手的问题是面包的干燥度。中国人喜欢软面包，而不是典型的法国小麦面包，所以为了满足所有客户，我们有不同干燥程度的面包。当地人也喜欢新产品，所以拿破仑面包店每个月都会制作几款新面包。
DB: Your desserts certainly score highly in terms of aesthetics! Is there a customer favourite?
您的甜点在美学方面肯定得分很高！顾客最喜欢哪一种?
Definitely the tiramisu! But it has to be the “real” one with mascarpone and not this “fake tiramisu” that most of the bakery make with cheese cream because it is cheaper. Our tiramisu is a combination of a delicate cream made of yolk, whipping cream, mascarpone and of course a lady finger soak in coffee.
绝对是提拉米苏！ 但它必须用马斯卡普尼干酪做的“真正的”提拉米苏，而不是假的，大多数面包店用奶酪奶油做，因为这样更便宜。我们的提拉米苏是由蛋黄，淡奶油，奶酪混合而成的精细的奶油，当然还有手指饼泡的咖啡。
DB: Nicolas, how has your French heritage influenced the goods that Napoleon Bakery sells?Nicolas, 请问您的法国知识财产如何影响拿破仑面包店销售产品？
I lived in France for 25 years, so now I try to bring European products to the Chinese market. That includes decent bread, because as of today, there is not a single bakery in Zhuhai who offers good, healthy and fresh bread, pies and other products like chocolate eclairs or mille feuille. In a nutshell, Napoleon bakery sells either what my mother and grandmother used to make in my childhood, or goods I used to see in bakeries in my homeland. Also, in order to like an authentic French bakery, we had to make good sandwiches, and recently we have a partnership with a famous chef to make those sandwiches which is great for us.
我在法国生活了25年，现在我试图把欧洲产品带到中国市场上，包括合适的面包，因为截至今天，珠海没有一家面包店能提供良好的、健康的、新鲜的面包、馅饼和其他类似的巧克力小饼干或酥饼的产品。 简而言之，拿破仑面包店卖的是我母亲和祖母在我的童年时期曾经做过的面包，以及在我家乡的面包店里曾经看到的产品。 另外，为了让你们喜欢上一个正宗的法国面包店，我们不得不做出美味的三明治。最近我们和一位着名的厨师合作，制作三明治，这对我们来说很好。
DB: What is the legacy that the team at Napoleon Bakery wish to leave behind?
拿破仑面包店希望留下什么样的遗产?
In contrast, here are some things that we at Napoleon Bakery have always steered clear of: making cheap breads/cakes with low quality raw material (these taste awful!) Also, selling frozen goods or goods from out the box is something we always avoid. We who make delicious breads/cakes with great raw material which gives the customer a great taste but at an expensive price. Thus Napoleon Bakery aims to make fresh and delectable cakes/breads. Not only do we exclusively use high quality raw materials, we set our products at a decent price to expand our target audience as much as possible. Overall, we are trying to democratize the French bread/cakes/pastries and to offer an authentic French taste to the Asian market.
相比之下，拿破仑面包店绝不会用便宜的原料制作便宜的面包/蛋糕（这些味道糟透了！）或者出售包装了冷冻货物的盒子。尽管有些人用很好的原料制作美味的面包/蛋糕，但给顾客带来的却是一种昂贵的味道。因此，拿破仑面包店旨在制作新鲜和美味的蛋糕/面包。 我们不仅专门使用高品质的原材料，而且会以合适的价格设定产品，以尽可能扩大目标客户群。总的来说，我们正在尝试将法国面包/蛋糕/糕点民主化，并向亚洲市场提供正宗的法国口味
DB: And lastly, what business ventures do you and your partner plan to explore in future years? 最后，请问您和您的伙伴打算在未来几年里从事什么样的商业活动？
Renting a shop in a good location is getting very pricy and it is hard to cover such a rent when you sell products between 10 and 20 RMB. That doesn’t include paying for salaries, electricity and maintenance. Our short term goal is to increase our delivery radius to other districts in Zhuhai if our first delivery kitchen is successful. When considering our long terms goals, we would love to expand our business to different cities along the Pearl River Delta. We feel that digital is the future, more and more people prefer to stay at home and order online via We Chat. If the customer can get good quality products, for the same price while watching TV at home, why would they bother to get out to get the baked goods? Thus we believe advertising through social media is the key for the marketing of our business. Franchising will also start soon as we are going to open 3 shops in the district of Xiangzhou. In between October and November, another branch of ours will be opened in Jida. Napoleon bakery are open to any kind of partnership that appreciates the delicate art of baking as much as we do!
一个好地理位置的店租是非常昂贵的，当您出售10到20元之间的产品时，是很难支付的起租金。这还不包括支付工资，电力和维修费用。我们的短期目标是如果我们的第一个送货厨房成功，我们可以增加珠海其他地区的交货距离。在考虑长期目标时，我们希望将业务拓展到珠江三角洲的不同城市。我们认为数字信息就是未来，越来越多的人喜欢呆在家里，通过微信在线订购。如果顾客在家看电视时能买到同样质量的优质商品，他们为什么还要出去买面包呢？因此，我们认为通过社交媒体进行广告是营销的关键。特许经营也将很快开始，因为我们将在香洲区开设3家店铺。在10月至11月间，我们的另一个分支将在吉达开放。拿破仑面包店对任何与我们一样热爱烘焙艺术表示十分欢迎！
Napoleon bakery address
珠海市斗门区井岸镇江湾中路237号
138 0980 7949
