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Balbosté may be in the business of creating and serving food, but co-founder Charlotte Sitbon wants to make clear: they are not caterers, nor are they here to feed.
That may seem like an unexpected statement from the creative and production studio providing culinary experiences for some of luxury’s biggest brands. For Sitbon, who launched Balbosté — a Yiddish expression describing a good homemaker — in 2017 with Japanese-born, Paris-based cook Sayaka Kaneko, it’s about using food as an accessible and alluring entry point for consumers wanting a slice of brand magic. Food has the power to “bring people together, to make connections, to break the ice and convey a message”, says Sitbon from Balbosté’s studio in Paris’s 10th arrondissement.
As food becomes a status symbol among young consumers, a growing number of luxury brands are teaming up with culinary talents to create feasts for their top clients to enjoy at events and private dinners. London-based chef Imogen Kwok has become a favourite in fashion circles with her artful gastronomy (Loewe and Prada are clients). New York’s Laila Gohar (also known as Laila Cooks) is known for creating fanciful food sculptures, as seen at events by Ganni and Simone Rocha, while French culinary collective We Are Ona has created food experiences for Jacquemus and Ecco.
What unites them is their desire to challenge what food should look like and do. Not only should a dinner now serve up delicious meals, it must also now be immersive — perhaps even slightly surreal — and delight all five senses. Balbosté is unlike the others, argues Sitbon. The company does not have a signature food style, making it more of a “chameleon” that is able to create one-off dishes that truly capture the essence of its brand clients, she says. “My clients are the star, not us.” However, that demands constant newness. Finding the right talent to keep up and innovate, as well as managing storage and other logistics, could be a challenge as Balbosté scales.
Business has been on fire, according to Jonathan Espinasse, Sitbon’s husband and Balbosté’s partner, general manager and chief operating officer. The company, which is independent, has been profitable since day one, according to the team. In 2022, it reached seven figures in annual revenues, up 450 per cent from the previous year, and as the environment begins to normalise in 2023, it will report at least 250 per cent sales growth for the year. “Our EBIT is 25 per cent, which is good in our industry and allows us to invest and continue with our recruitment,” says Espinasse.
Having outgrown its current space, Balbosté is in negotiations to move into a 400-square-metre studio near the Batignolles neighbourhood, which would mark the next phase for the business, says Espinasse. The new location includes an extended professional kitchen for production and R&D; a laboratory for food tech and 3D printing; a dedicated area for its designers, project managers and business developers; and a space with a six-metre-high ceiling that will allow the company to host private dinners for up to 20 guests.
The art of multi-sensory marketing
Sitbon and Espinasse both left their advertising jobs in 2016, having felt unfulfilled in their respective roles, but unsure of what to do next. Food had long been an interest for Sitbon, who grew up in Switzerland where high-quality, locally sourced ingredients played a big part in everyday living. She had also spent a lot of time travelling when she was younger, exposing her to different foods around the world, and was particularly drawn to Asia, she says.
Things began to kick into motion when Sitbon met Kaneko, who specialises in hearty family-style dishes. The two began getting to know each other and started to spend time in each other’s kitchens, eventually launching Balbosté. A breakthrough came in 2018 when Chanel asked Balbosté to host a cocktail event to celebrate its latest high jewellery collection. (The French luxury house had discovered Balbosté through Instagram, Sitbon says.) With astrology as the theme, Balbosté created fortune cookies and edible crystals.
At the time, Sitbon was still working out of her kitchen at home. The project helped to finance Balbosté’s move to the studio it is in today. Then, in 2020, the pandemic struck and demand fell, so Balbosté focused on hosting online workshops and offering deliveries of its creations to stay afloat. By 2022, events were roaring back. In January that year, Loewe asked Balbosté to stage a dinner for its VICs. That included not only creating the menu, but managing the food production and overall event — something that Balbosté had never done before. It forced Balbosté to learn how to create a 360-degree marketing experience.
“It was our first big project, which opened doors to other brands,” says Sitbon, which she is grateful for. “I always said to Jonathan that I didn’t want to team up with another production agency. I wanted to keep working directly with the client, because it’s important to keep creativity at the centre of our activities.” Too many cooks in the kitchen could lead to core ideas being diluted and lost, Sitbon believes.
Beyond the food, Balbosté pays close attention to details, such as the dress code of the waiting staff, the service ritual and the communication and marketing materials that are all designed to harmoniously align with the overarching theme of its client. The development process ranges from two weeks to two months. A dinner can range anywhere between €300 to €3,000 per person, depending on the scale of the project. Creativity remains the focus. “We never wanted to have a business model that is based on volume,” says Espinasse.
To date, Balbosté has worked with Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Miu Miu, Chloé and Dior. Loewe remains a client; in February, it worked with Balbosté on a multi-dimensional Studio Ghibli-themed pop-up at Selfridges, which included a takeover of the store’s cafe and featured Instagrammable foods like meadow-inspired sandwiches, vermicelli broomsticks and cloud terrines. “We tried not to copy and paste and recreate the exact food that we’ve seen in the movie, but did our interpretation of it,” says Espinasse.
Balbosté’s team of 20 is entirely in-house and consists of a mix of chefs, who are supervised by Kaneko, and project managers, graphic designers and 3D artists, who are overseen by Sitbon. The combination of creatives across different fields under one roof allows Balbosté to be innovative, says Espinasse. “We recruit people based on what they want to be able to do, but they might now know how to do it yet,” he adds. “We’re betting on the potential of people, rather than just their skills and experiences.” Working at Balbosté requires constant creativity, because there is no fixed menu and each new creation is led by the client’s needs. It’s a challenge that its cooks enjoy, says Espinasse.
When it comes to food, brands shouldn’t think about creating Instagrammable experiences for social media’s sake; that lacks storytelling and substance, warns Sitbon. Like any marketing campaign, there needs to be authenticity and focus, she says. The key, she believes, is listening. “I think that sometimes people just listen to their own stomachs or look at their own screens; they’re not looking at what is going on around them, which is the most important part of the job.”
Key takeaway: As food becomes a status symbol among young consumers, luxury brands are joining forces with buzzy culinary talent to create food as an accessible and alluring entry point. Balbosté, co-founded by Charlotte Sitbon and Sayaka Kaneko, has become the creative and production studio of choice for brands including Chanel, Hermès and Loewe. Its biggest challenge will be managing its pace of growth as an independent business, and ensuring constant newness without a signature to fall back on.
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