Baton Rouge bakery moves downtown, joining forces with local coffee shop

For years, Les Amis Bake Shoppe has supplied its scratch-made baked goods to City Roots Coffee Bar in the Electric Depot. Now, the two concepts have leveled up their partnership with a joint concept on the first floor of II City Plaza in downtown Baton Rouge.

The sunlight-filled space serves breakfast and lunch, specialty espresso drinks, salads, sandwiches and a variety of rotating macarons, cupcakes and other pastries. The bakery will continue to make its signature wedding and celebration cakes, says founder and owner Stephanie Hansen.

The new digs represent a relocation for Les Amis, which has closed its Coursey Boulevard store to move downtown. It’s the second location for City Roots. The coffee shop’s original Electric Depot location, where it roasts beans, remains open.

The new store’s large glass case holds tempting sweets like Les Amis’ top-selling dark chocolate salted caramel cupcakes, chocolate-covered Oreos, cake balls, cheesecake slices and French macarons. Hansen says that with a captive downtown crowd, she and her team plan to rotate flavors more frequently to keep things interesting.

“I’m leaving it up to my staff,” she says. “Whatever they feel like making or switching up every day. They’re having fun with that.”

Hansen opened Les Amis in 2013, never expecting to own and operate a commercial bakery. The Baton Rouge native and Redemptorist High School alum thought she wanted to be an orthodontist, but jokes that an organic chemistry class at LSU changed her mind. She worked at The Chimes during college and made cupcakes on the side, garnering enough positive feedback on her baking skills to inspire the opening of Les Amis. Over its 13 years in business, the bakery developed a loyal clientele with homemade cakes inspired by family recipes, Hansen says.

“Everything we do is from scratch,” she says. “We don’t use any mixes or fillings in a bag.”

The downtown space has a big upside for Hansen. She and her team can focus exclusively on baking. City Roots’ staff interfaces with walk-in customers, with the Les Amis team preparing all the menu items in the back while also filling cake orders and orders for wholesale clients that include Alexander’s Highland Market, Garden District Coffee and Drakes Catering, an LSU vendor.

The City Roots side of the operation is run by Dominick Blanda, a longtime coffee professional who joined forces with Community Coffee executive Matt Saurage to open City Roots in the Electric Depot in 2020. The artisan concept is Saurage’s pet project. Blanda brought in Les Amis’ sweet and savory baked goods to round out the beverage menu.

“One of the things I had a passion for was good pastries. We knew coffee, but we reached out to Stephanie to provide the pastries,” Blanda says. “She does it really well.”

The partnership’s success in the Electric Depot paved the way for the current venture in the Convention Street complex. Blanda says building owner Mike Wampold “wanted to do something special for the people in the building.”

The two businesses began talking in late 2024 about the combined concept. City Roots moved in first, followed by Les Amis.

“We did a little kiosk for coffee, but then teamed up with Stephanie to take things to the next level,” Blanda says. “We roast our own coffee and keep it really fresh, and she has these beautiful fresh pastries. We figured we’d combine our powers.”

Coffee junkies find numerous hot and cold espresso options on the menu, like the cold brew de crema, a layered cold beverage with caramel, espresso cold brew and sweet cream cold foam, and the blackberry cobbler matcha, which incorporates higher-end ceremonial matcha from distributor Matcha Moto, Blanda says.

Find City Roots Coffee Bar and Les Amis Bake Shoppe at 400 Convention Street. Both are open 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. Les Amis is also open 8 a.m. to noon on Saturday for pick-up orders only.