La Cure Gourmande opens Asian flagship boutique in Singapore

Having spent the past 25 years building a reputation for handmade vintage biscuits, chocolates and sweets, French confectioner La Cure Gourmande is expanding its presence in Asia with its latest outpost at the heart of Singapore’s main shopping belt.

The brand’s first Singapore store — and the second in Asia following its recent South Korea opening — is also its Asian flagship store.

“For many years, we were looking to set (our) first footprint here in South-east Asia,” said co-founder Edouard Hennebert, who started the business with Christian Berlan in 1989. “It all happened quite fast, in the last six months, more or less.

Hennebert said there is still much to learn about expanding the business globally, adding that one of the biggest challenges is to “learn, culturally, how the people will talk about the product and the brand in order to express the brand and its value the same way (it is done) in Europe”.

“Our main concern is to build the brand and to tell the same story and the same core values,” he said.

While there is a lot of history, tradition and culture behind La Cure Gourmande’s products back home in France, Hennebert remains confident that these will go down well with Singaporeans. “(There are) two reasons,” he said. “First, it’s not old — it’s traditional but at the same time it’s modern, because of the packaging, the colour, because of the way we sell the products ... We are a traditional brand in a modern world.

“The second reason, I feel, is that more and more, everybody is looking for simple, traditional things that root you to your childhood, in the products you ate as a child.”

This focus on products that evoke a sense of nostalgia is obvious, but that is not to say the brand hasn’t successfully incorporated a few innovative products, such as its filled biscuits (crisp butter cookies filled with chocolate and fruit jams) and their top-selling filled madeleine (available in chocolate, orange, blueberry, raspberry and caramel), which was introduced only two years ago.

Hennebert added that there will be a new product created for the Asian market - a pineapple biscuit, filled with pineapple jam. “We will (also) make lollipops with lychee, mango and pineapple flavours, and these will be specific for South-east Asia.”

The Singapore store currently features more than 170 products ranging from biscuits and chocolates to caramels and nougat, as well as savoury shortbread pastry called navettes, which was first created over 200 years ago in 1781 and is flavoured with Provence herbs, cumin and blue cheese, among others.

And Hennebert said they’re not stopping with Singapore, adding that the company is looking to open a second store by the end of the year or early next year. “We’ve already opened a store in Seoul in the Lotte Department Store, we’ll open one more in Hyundae in August; and we are looking to expand into Philippines, Japan and probably Malaysia,” he shared.

La Cure Gourmande Singapore is located at #03-09 Takashimaya Shopping Centre (Tel: 6684 2983)