Le Pain Quotidien's digital storefront

Turning a global heritage brand website into a global, story‑driven digital storefront

TL;DR

Global bakery‑restaurant needed a site that could carry a 35‑year philosophy beyond just menus, while staying consistent across many countries and franchisees.
Built and recently launched a narrative‑first digital storefront on a global Next.js and DatoCMS platform, unifying 15+ sites into one system with modular blocks and AI‑assisted translation.
The bet: guests who feel Le Pain Quotidien’s story are more likely to return, so the site makes the philosophy as tangible as the menu.

About Le Pain Quotidien

Founded in Belgium in 1990, Le Pain Quotidien is an international bakery-restaurant love brand with 260+ locations in 20 countries, known for quality ingredients, artisanal bread, and communal tables.

Services

Digital product strategy MX™ UX & UI design Content strategy Frontend development Headless CMS implementation Data & analytics Accessibility compliance

Year

2025 — Present

CSSDA > Winner UX, UI and Innovation

Awwward > Honored by one of the leading design platforms

The Lovie awards > We won both Silver as the public vote

Thanks for being with us through every challenge. Thanks for acting like founders and thinking like owners

Joost Vastenavondt, Chief Growth Officer

The challenge

A story‑rich brand trapped in fragmented sites

Most restaurant sites push menus and promos. Le Pain Quotidien had more to share: rituals, philosophy, 33‑hour breadmaking. But the story was split across many local sites, each managed in isolation. Content was hard to govern, the brand diluted, and franchisees needed freedom without breaking consistency. Our hypothesis: guests who feel the Le Pain Quotidien story are more likely to return. The problem: none of the existing sites were built to make that story stick. How could we turn this fragmented setup into one global storefront that scales the brand and deepens emotional connection?

The Solution

A narrative‑first global storefront on one flexible core

The goal was to make the website feel as intentional as walking into a Le Pain Quotidien bakery. The homepage opens with a quiet manifesto: a poem, a loaf, and the “fourth ingredient” of the bread, time, before any menu appears. Atelier, menu, and magazine pages weave story, craft, and large imagery into every visit, so guests sense the brand before they order. Under the hood, a Next.js frontend and DatoCMS backend power modular blocks, AI‑assisted translation, and clear governance. HQ and local teams manage 25+ countries and 40+ locales from one source of truth. The result: a scalable platform where the core philosophy stays intact, and each country tells it in its own accent.

Success drivers

Don’t build a website, build a brand experience.
One global story, structured local freedom.
Deep immersion makes the difference.

success driver 1

Don’t build a website, build a brand experience

We started from feelings, not from a sitemap: welcome, unhurried, part of something real. The hypothesis was clear: guests who understand Le Pain Quotidien’s story are more likely to return, so we put that story everywhere: home, atelier, magazine, menu. By turning operations and craft into memory triggers, we nudged people from a one‑off visit toward a lasting preference.

Success driver 2

One global story, structured local freedom

Instead of letting every market launch its own site, we built a single headless CMS with strong multilingual and locale control. Shared content models and AI‑assisted translation keep the story consistent, while markets still adapt language and menus. This balance of central rules and local freedom keeps the brand coherent without drowning teams in manual work.

Success driver 3

Deep immersion makes the difference

This platform works because we knew Le Pain Quotidien beyond the brief. Six years of collaboration, founder talks, bakery floor visits, and time at franchisee events gave us a view of brand, operations, and guest experience from the inside. That immersion let us make bolder, simpler choices and shape a website that feels unmistakably Le Pain Quotidien.