It has taken six long months, but the big moment has finally come: the new French bakery on Front Street is opening its doors this week.
“I am excited, I have butterflies,” says owner Zahra Anzza, in an interview with ThoroldToday. “By Thursday we’ll do a soft opening. On Saturday we’re going to do a grand opening.”
As ThoroldToday reported, JC Patissier, which Anzza owns together with her husband, Juan Asenjo, was supposed to open in November. The city kept erecting obstacles that prevented the couple from obtaining the necessary business permits, but all that trouble is in the past now.
“All the experience with the permits is bitter but, you know what, I’ll forget about it,” Anzza says. “It’s a new step, we’re going to get on and that’s it. All that matters is that we can open our store and we can start doing what we love to do.”
It’s been a real whirlwind to get everything ready in the final stretch. When it comes to opening hours, Anzza says the couple will be playing it by ear.
“I think for the beginning we’re going to go from 9:00 to 5:00,” she says. “After 5:00 everything closes here and there’s not too many people around. We want to be open when everything is open and we’ll test the waters. If we need to prolong it, we can. If we need to open later, we can—and we can go from there.”
For now, Anzza and Asenjo are working hard to put together the grand opening for Saturday.
“We’ll do a big cake to celebrate the opening,” says Anzza. “We’ll have some little things for the people to munch on, we’ll have free coffee at certain times. It will be like a gathering, we can share all together.”
After dreaming about the grand opening for so long, Anzza says she is nervous for it to become reality.
“Big time, but that’s good nervous,” she says. “Hopefully everything goes well and we’ll be accepted by the people.”
