From my kitchen table
BRIOCHE was not a business idea I had been carrying around for years. It arrived during weaning, at the same time as the mess, the tired evenings and the feeling that every small decision suddenly mattered.
We had bought the silicone plates everyone seemed to recommend. After a couple of dishwasher cycles, our daughter’s food tasted of detergent. I tried it myself because I thought I must be imagining it. I wasn’t.
“I wasn’t looking for a gap in the market. I was trying to serve dinner.”
I found bamboo that looked beautiful but needed hand washing. Then I found stainless steel—practical, hygienic, durable, and strangely joyless in every children’s design I could find.
So I began sketching at the kitchen table. A generous main space. Smaller places for changing tastes. A shape a child could recognise, without covering the table in bright plastic. A suction base that could help now and come off later.
I am still feeding a toddler on this plate. That keeps the work honest. If a detail makes our own evening harder, it does not survive the next drawing.
I am learning how to build a company at the same time as I am learning how to be a mum. I do not think that makes the idea less credible. It is the reason I know the problem so closely.
Sophie