Staffing

Paris Baguette hires former Sodexo director as executive chef

Paris Baguette has hired Andre Fuehr as executive chef. Provided

March 22, 2022

Paris Baguette has hired Andre Fuehr as executive chef to lead the chain's team of bakers and cakers, support growth goals and lean into customer insights to plan for the future, said Darren Tipton, CEO of Paris Baguette.

"Chef Fuehr's passion and knowledge of both the culinary and hospitality world will be invaluable to our product development and cafés," he said in a company press release. "His customer-centric approach and community-spirited leadership style will play a pivotal role in our commitment to producing high-quality baked and brewed goods as we bring Paris Baguette to neighborhoods across the country."

Fuehr, who joined the team in early 2022, has served as sous chef under Raimond Hofmeister at fine dining establishment Century Plaza Hotel in Vancouver. Following his time in restaurants, Chef Fuehr's career led him to commercial kitchens where he discovered he was adept at taking a product and scaling it, often producing 3 to 5 million units of something without disrupting quality. In his role as executive chef at Unos, a pizzeria and grill known for its Chicago-style deep-dish pizzas, he developed thin crust pizza that could stack up against its beloved thick-crusted counterpart.

Most recently, Fuehr was on the front line of feeding children in need in Massachusetts during the pandemic as director of Operations at Sodexo. Utilizing his custom manufacturing skills, he scaled the company's 12,000 weekly meal production facility to output 120,000 meals a week, totaling nearly 7 million meals in 2020.

"I spent the early part of my career as a typical young chef, working in kitchens around the clock," Fuehr said in the release. "But I found my passion for food when I started working in test kitchens and learned to scale production. This is where all the pieces come together at Paris Baguette: bringing expert craftsmanship in baked and brewed goods to scale for our customers today and tomorrow. I'm excited to be part of the growth of the bakery cafés and help navigate the business changes that will come our way through expansion."

Paris Baguette plans to have 1,000 locations in the United States by 2030.