Today we’d like to introduce you to Viviane Fonfrede.
Viviane, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My husband Yannick and I have opened The Galloping Galette in downtown Braselton, GA in October 2017 and we are offering galettes, crêpes, French wines, home crafted cocktails (bloody Mary, spritz, mimosas, etc.) specialty coffees and hot teas by Mariage Frères and Numi Tea. While everybody usually knows what a crêpe is, very few know about the galette at first. Both are traditional specialties from Bretagne (Brittany, Western Northern France) where I was born. The galette is basically a savory crepe made with gluten-free buckwheat, while the sweet crepe is made with white flour. Our opening hours are currently:
– 11am to 3pm Wednesday-Friday
– 10am to 3pm Saturday
– 10am to 2pm Sunday
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
When we first open back in 2017, we were the 3rd restaurant in downtown Braselton. Yannick was not completely fluent and comfortable in English yet and I was a Freelance English-to-French working from home. The galette was an unknown food and most people had no idea that The Galloping Galette even existed.
While I was just supposed to help with the opening, I quickly realized that people (including our servers) had pretty much no idea of what we were offering. So I promptly took on the part of introducing the restaurant and the galette to the guests, therefore taking charge of the dining room and the customer’s experience, which enabled Yannick to keep the focus on the kitchen.
Staffing has been tricky (especially in the kitchen). Fortunately, my husband and I have always been very hands-on, so we were able to be there during our opening hours during the first three years at least.
We have had awesome people working with us since day 1, but we remained stretched thin for quite a long time. Now, things have improved greatly in that respect, with some people who have been on the team for more than 3/4 years now.
But recruiting reliable individuals for the kitchen team remains tough.
We have also been extremely fortunate.
Over the years, we have built a strong relationship with our guests who have always been incredibly supportive. When we first opened, people liked our food and spread the word, which has been tremendously helpful to us and enabled us to grow slowly but surely.
We have fabulous neighbors, especially The Cotton Calf Kitchen (with Vincent Price) and North Georgia Olive Oil Company (with Samantha Cruce Mehl) who have always been here for us, especially during the Covid-19.
As for everyone, the Covid-19 of course has been rough.
This being said, Braselton, Hoschton, the whole area really is a wonderful community who supports their businesses. And again, word of the mouth has been everything! Our guests had done such a great job of spreading the word during our first couple of years that we managed to stay in business and meet new guests whom we could never serve before with our brunch/lunch hours,
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your career path?
In France, my husband used to remodel houses and owned a business, tou9, for 15 years that he sold in 2016 before moving us to the US to open our crêperie restaurant. As for me, I worked for Explore, a company specialized in Business Intelligence for 7 years, before becoming an English-to-French translator and creating my own business VF Translations by the end of 2010. I combined my translation business with the restaurant until the end of 2021.
How do you define success?
I guess that when I think about success, it is more its synonym “Achievement” that I have in mind. Professionally speaking, it is about the completion of milestones but it is also about accomplishing oneself on a personal level.
Starting over and leaving everyone behind to come and start a French creperie in Georgia was the biggest challenge of our personal and professional lives.
We were not suffering of a lack of friends or family ties, but we were definitely in need of a change of scenery. I already had a virtual foot in America with my translation business since most of my clients were US-based, with one of them (my first client) being located in Atlanta.
But my husband was barely speaking English and very much rooted in Nantes, with his former business tou9. Then on a Sunday of Spring 2016, the decision was made to leave our home country and to engage in this new venture of opening a restaurant in Georgia.
My husband sold his business, we sold our house, then we came to Georgia. We had five weeks to find the location of our restaurant.
We found it just across from The Cotton Calf Kitchen (and thanks to them).
We traveled back to France.
Then, in February 2017, my husband came back to work with the local contractors (BMK and other businesses) in order to prepare the restaurant for its opening.
After 3 months on his own here, he came back to me almost fluent in English and ready for us to apply for our visa to the US Embassy in Paris. We were awarded it a couple of months later. Yannick left immediately. I arrived one month later with the dog and we opened the restaurant in October 16th.
It was just the beginning of the first step to our new life.
We are now on the path to our 6th year of living in Georgia. We have been fortunate enough to meet kind and fantastique people thanks to the restaurant. Those with whom we work are awesome and a part of our family at that point. We have also made close friends (and I am not saying that lightly) over the years, who have been here for us during the Covid-19 and all the other personal things that we all experience in our daily lives, but which were sometimes more difficult to overcome because of our usual gang is another continent.
We miss our family and friends in France of course, the Covid-19 has been extremely tough in that respect. But we have put down new roots here and we now get a certain sense of accomplishment that was probably missing previously.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thegallopinggalette/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TGG.TheGallopingGalette/
