A brewery, his own brand, and now a bar… Martin Pellet (E10) is on his way to building a craft beer empire. We met him for a chat (and a drink).

ESSEC Alumni: How did you go from a business school to a beer bar?

Martin Pellet: I first had a spell in strategic consulting at A.T. Kearney, so as to become more organised and conscientious and add a few lines to my CV. After four years of that, I fancied a change and teamed up with some friends and opened La Beer Fabrique, a brewery in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, where people can come and learn how to make their own beer, much like a cookery class. It was a natural progression to launch my own brand of craft beer, L.B.F, with Marc Charpentier (E12), and then open my own bar, Le Bar Fondamental.

EA: How did you learn to brew beer?

M. Pellet: A bit like an apprentice chemist, in baby steps and through a series of experiments. When I was at ESSEC, I found out that you could get brewing kits containing the utensils and ingredients (malt, hops, and yeast) you need to make your own beer in your kitchen or garage. That was when I started brewing my own IPA, initially because it was ten times cheaper to make at home than to buy in the shops, and then because I loved the fun, creative side of brewing.

EA: The beer industry has really taken off in the past few years, with an explosion of independent brands and more varied flavours. How would you explain this phenomenon?

M. Pellet: It was part of a wider phenomenon: consumers are looking for quality products, traceability, healthy ingredients, and local production. Microbreweries meet all of these criteria, as craft beers are brewed locally using only water, malt, hops, and yeast, without any additives or preservatives. And they have much more depth of flavour than commercial beers.

EA: What is the L.B.F. brand’s market positioning?

M. Pellet: We have two USPs. Firstly, we adopt a “consumer-centric” approach and all of our beers are collaborative products; we drew on the opinions of almost 10,000 apprentice brewers who had attended our workshops for our first four beers: a Pale Ale, a wheat beer, a Dubbel (a golden ale), and an IPA. Then we created spaces where our customers could explore the world of craft beer, which is far deeper and more complex than one might think.

EA: Why did you decide to open a bar, as well as launching your own brand?

M. Pellet: Our ambition is to get all of France into good beer. We can take around 100 people every week in our brewery classes, with a high average spend, while in a bar, we can welcome 5–10 times more customers, with a lower average spend. Opening Le Bar Fondamental naturally seemed like the best way to get more people into beer. Then we just needed to reinvent the beer bar experience...

EA: So what is so special about Le Bar Fondamental?

M. Pellet: When you think of a “beer bar”, you tend to imagine an Irish pub where the beer is bad, the floor sticky, and the air a bit smelly, or a bar for beer geeks with too much choice, a confusing menu, and a complete lack of consumer education. Le Bar Fondamental offers a totally different experience. Our customers can choose between 15 beers on tap: L.B.F beers, weekly limited editions brewed on-site, and a selection of the world’s best craft beers. They can learn what to order thanks to our menu that has a dictionary, glossary and a selection guide. And every weekend customers can come to our brewery classes and open brewing sessions. Newbies and aficionados are all welcome to discover or learn more about craft beer! 

EA: Running a bar is a different profession to brewing beer. How did you get ready for your new business?

M. Pellet: With La Beer Fabrique, we already had a solid experience of managing business premises. To understand our future challenges and how to run a bar, we studied many different concepts and teamed up with Youssef Chraibi, who as a former employee at Foy’s had a lot of experience behind the bar!

EA: It seems like more and more business school graduates are opening bars and restaurants. Is that how you see it?

M. Pellet: There’s definitely a steady stream of business school graduates opening bars or restaurants and who we really get along with: Le Bien Elevé, Les Pinces, Madame Pervenche, Le Barbiche, to name but a few... It’s great for us as we can help each other and make faster progress by learning from others’ mistakes or, on the other hand, being inspired by their success.

EA: Not content with just launching their own brand, these graduates often end up opening chains or franchises. Is that what you have planned? On what time scale?

M. Pellet: A few months after opening, we are already really happy with the feedback. Our first customers loved the experience and we are making double the profits of the people who had the premises before us. That said, what we are focusing on now is improving the experience, to really perfect it. Once we’ve done that we will see if – and when – we will open new bars.