Le Boulanger

[lights humming] FRANCOIS POUPART: [speaking French] [French violin and accordian music plays] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [acoutic guitar music] SPEAKER 2: Everyone wants to talk to Francois.

Everyone wants to get a glimpse of him.

And he's very kind and sweet and generous.

Treats his employees like family.

SPEAKER 3: Growing up, you're little kids-- you know, your mom's always, OK, sit still, be good in church, we'll go to Poupart's and get a surprise.

So our Sunday crew is-- we still have a lot of the same people come every week.

We have the coffee crew.

They come in, they eat, they drink coffee, they speak French.

No, it's a real close family community.

SPEAKER 4: I love my French heritage.

And this is one of the reasons why I come to Poupart's, because they speak French here.

SPEAKER 5: [speaking French] SPEAKER 4: [speaking French] SPEAKER 5: My generation is probably the ones that's going to be the last ones that speak French.

It's a dying dialect.

FRANCOIS POUPART: [speaking French] [acoutic guitar music] That's my wife.

Her name was Louise.

She's from France.

And this is Patrick, with the big mouth.

[laughs] This is all Patrick.

PATRICK POUPART: My name is Patrick Poupart.

I was born and raised at the bakery.

Grew up living upstairs.

So these are some of the things I learned how to do as a kid, playing with dough.

So this is a typical French bread dough-- flour, yeast, salt, and water.

And I'm going to make a couple of little creatures for you all right quick.

People ask me how long I've been working in the bakery.

Been working down here since I started coming down the stairs.

Started getting little chores and different stuff to do.

That's going to be the body.

Cut a few legs out.

There are your back scales.

I learned from my father a lot.

I learned from other bakers that came through here.

And I also went to baking school in France.

I'm going to spray a little bit of egg wash on it, which is going to give it a nice shine.

25 minutes, we'll have an alligator bread.

FRANCOIS POUPART: We used to have so many of these.

And we have boat, people in that boat.

And one day, you have one jump on the boat.

[speaking French] Your eyes open all the time.

[acoutic guitar music] PATRICK POUPART: Poupart's Bakery is a very strong, well-known establishment in Lafayette.

It's been on this corner since 1967.

So, I mean, it states its ground.

I mean, it's here to stay.

It's been my whole life.

And I am responsible, and I will continue this business.

And we've grown it a lot.

And I've grown it in different ways, also, that's brought in a lot of our other stuff, our festivals.

And we're just going to keep doing it to get it to the next level, and then we'll figure it from there.

[acoutic guitar music] ♪ ♪ ♪ [chirping crickets]