Closing an immensely successful restaurant to exclusively sell croissants might sound like a half-baked idea.
Element 112 in Sylvania evolved last summer to Madeline’s Patisserie. The Main Street bakery owners, Michele Nixon and her son Chris are now preparing for a move to a new location in the city to accommodate their growing croissant business.
“I said to chef one day, ‘Did you ever think there’d be such a love affair with croissants?’ It keeps growing and snowballing,” said Denise Stiebeling, a host.
Mr. Nixon is the master chef behind the croissants and the former restaurant, Element 112.
A man from Carmela food distribution stopped in for lunch, and the Nixons’ lives changed.
“All of a sudden, he was yelling for Chris,” Ms. Nixon recalled.
The distributor asked where he got the croissant. Mr. Nixon told him he had made the flaky, rich dessert, using skills he had learned in a Paris restaurant.
“He said ‘you need to go into the croissant business, and we’ll all make a lot of money,’” Ms. Nixon recounted.