Berkeley restaurant known for its potato puffs plans to franchise

With their golden crust and soft, fluffy interior, the potato puffs have been a hit since the tiny French restaurant opened 20 years ago, right around the corner from Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Jacquet estimates that he makes thousands each month — but that’s about as far as the chef is willing to talk about them. He guards the recipe, and even the inspiration, so closely that employees sign a non-disclosure agreement before making them.

For two decades now, the hole-in-the-wall has been handing out take-out containers of fried chicken sandwiches to Berkeley students and long-time residents alike, who all angle for a seat at two picnic tables out front. It may not sound like a fancy spot, but don’t be fooled: The place has fine dining in its soul.

Jacquet, an exacting man with a proletariat streak, opened Grégoire after a long career making elegant meals at fine dining restaurants. He spent five years working under legendary chef Jacky Robert’s now-shuttered Amelio’s, and then seven at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco.

His bosses’ attitudes toward takeout were clear: “My food, you eat it at a table because it’s perfect and it’s ready to eat and you have to eat it now,’” he recalls. “They always thought their food should never be put in a box.”

Jacquet had very different plans for his restaurant. Like Chez Panisse around the corner, he wanted a rotating seasonal menu, taking advantage of everything California has to offer. And — most importantly — it had to be accessible to the people.

A gregarious man by nature, Jacquet wanted to open a small-scale restaurant where he could interact with his customers. So, he and his wife Tara pulled their life savings and opened the tiny 500 square-foot restaurant. To make sure the food stayed good on the move, he designed his very own cardboard takeout boxes, complete with vents to help keep the steam out. He even patented the now-iconic octagon containers.

As the face of the restaurant, Jacquet holds everything to the highest standard (in addition to naming it after himself, he literally adorned the boxes with a picture of his face). 

“I have preparatory recipes, everything comes from me,” Jacquet says. But the rotating menu keeps the food feeling fresh and exciting. “My mind is always working.” 

Even before the pandemic, customers would wait in long lines to receive their meals, watching skillful cooks breeze through grilling and prep through the large storefront window. The restaurant gets all kinds of customers, from students to seasoned locals. Jacquet even recalls when one of Chez Panisse’s longtime chefs stopped by to observe the business in its early days. 

“Jean-Pierre Moullé lived up the street on Walnut and he used to walk every day in front of the restaurant to go to work. One day he stopped and said, ‘You know what Grégoire? I wish I had that idea before you,” Jacquet says with a laugh. “That was a nice thing to say.” 

When the pandemic hit, Jacquet says it took his team a couple of weeks to figure out their next move. But they were much better situated than other restaurants, and already had a deal with restaurant app Caviar to handle takeout orders and delivery. While Grégoire lost its catering business, it ended up with 10% more customers overall.  

In the time he’s owned the takeout restaurant, Jacquet has also kept busy with other projects, including in 2006, when he opened the short-lived Socca Oven, a chickpea flour pizza joint. When it closed after a few months over conflict with his business partner, that didn’t slow him down; he soon opened a second, much larger Grégoire in Oakland. Jacquet says he wanted to see if he could operate two businesses with different menus at once. He succeeded for over a decade, but in 2017, burned out from splitting his days, he made the tough decision to close the Oakland outpost. 

“I was tired,” He said. “It became way too busy for me by myself and I had to let one go,” Jacquet says. “I didn’t have that business sense of [knowing] you don’t have to do everything by yourself.”

Now, on the cusp of his 20th anniversary, he’s gearing up to grow once again — this time as a franchise. 

“I started thinking about franchising for a long, long time because the concept is so awesome,” Jacquet said. “It’s 20 years in the making.” 

Jacquet says he hopes to start with a location in San Francisco and later expand to other Bay Area cities. Eventually, he’d like to have his name on restaurants around the country, maybe Los Angeles or New York. But for the local stores, he’s not quite ready to turn the reins over to someone else. His plan is to start with a central kitchen, where he and a team can prepare food and deliver it to the new locations. His goal is a seamless system where he can ensure the new locations meet his standards for quality and consistency. 

“I’ve been working on the franchise for every second of the day,” Jacquet said. “Organizing a franchise system is no small potatoes.”