The Business Journal’s 2019 Restaurateur of the Year Laurent Vrignaud is a hard man to find, and that’s good.
He’s been building his Moulin restaurant empire one crepe at a time, and five years on from launch has shifted into an even higher gear.
The Newport Beach location opened in September 2014, followed by downtown Laguna Beach in summer 2016, then San Clemente, this year.
A fourth is now open at SoCo/The OC Mix in Costa Mesa and two more—Irvine and Dana Point—are set for next year.
“Will I have seven? Not sure. Will I have 20? Probably not,” Vrignaud told me over coffee at the new Costa Mesa café. “Six years ago, I didn’t know anything about this business except what was inside my head. My dream was to have one store. Now I have 100 employees.”
But, he vowed, “We will not grow the brand outside Orange County. Proximity is key.”
This is partly because he’s a hands-on guy and likes to visit all the locations each day; Vrignaud works eight days of every seven to keep his escalating empire on track.
In a former life, he spent 30 years in action sports before opening Moulin.
He’s heard some “go into the restaurant business to be cool. This is not cool. This job is hard.”
Conceptual Mix
His latest coming-soon concept is Moulin in the Box, a slimmed down version at Irvine’s Corporate Park, in a 480-square-foot shipping container retrofitted to mirror the display counter at a full-service Moulin. Its focus is grab-and-go-to favorites including crepes, panini, salads, patisserie classics and coffee.
“I sell something world-renowned: a French baguette, a croissant, a Parisian sandwich, a crepe,” said Vrignaud. “I have a responsibility to deliver it the same way I grew up with it in Paris.”
Nearly a hundred million people visited Paris last year, he said, and people “can walk into my place and say it’s the real deal. It starts with the product. The product is the hero.”
Soon after Irvine comes Dana Point, corner of Coast Highway and Niguel Road, with Moulin’s full menu as a prime illustration of the Franco-American fusion uniting all his sites: look for rotisserie chicken, omelets and steak frites.
OC Mix, meanwhile, has been carefully curated by Newport Beach developer Burnham USA, roughly as it happens along the same timespan as Moulin’s growth, reviving a moribund shopping center off the San Diego (405) Freeway with a mix of home-focused retail and hip food options. The developer recently replicated its niche focus at LBX, not far from Long Beach Airport and is a partner on the massive Dana Point Harbor redevelopment project.
Vrignaud took space vacated by a French pastry school for his café and pastry lab, with enough space to make—cue expansion plans again—authentic French pastries for up to a dozen Moulin locations.
“The Frenchman in me is content but the American in me is in constant pursuit,” Vrignaud said.
Visit Moulin.com
