In the two years since our story, Cho and her husband, Jay, have been hard at work getting La Maison Bleue's name and products in front of more consumers. The pop-up model was helping Anna's business grow, and she rented a small commercial prep space in Mitsuwa Marketplace to increase production capacity. It was this expansion that spurred Jay to get more involved.
"She told me she got the kitchen, and we had been working with so many people to get the name out," Jay said. "I started asking for data and metrics, because I could see that this was going be a thing people wanted."
With a commercial prep space secured, La Maison Bleue moved into packaging its drinks for retail purchase, and the Hughes Trigg Student Center on the Southern Methodist University campus became one of the first places to regularly carry La Maison Bleue drinks, followed shortly by the BIRD Bakery in Highland Park.
La Maison Bleue is also working to introduce its beverages into restaurants such as Pearl Sushi on McKinney Avenue, where the organic teas and coffees not only stand on their own, but make an intriguing base for alcoholic cocktails. There's definitely a market for organic cocktails; when we stopped by La Maison Bleue's booth at last year's Chefs For Farmers festival, the line of people waiting to sample its spiked fruit teas was at least a dozen people deep.
Despite the newfound growth, all of the drinks are still created with natural ingredients that lead to a delicious beverage. Anna is still the primary creator of recipes and leans heavily into what fruits are in season, although her menu offers some permanent flavors at all times. The Okinawa Milk Tea is a creamy delight, and the Yuzu Pear lets the sweetness of the pears shine in a drink that's light and refreshing.
La Maison Bleue's packaged drinks ($8) can be found on the shelf at Mitsuwa Marketplace, but earlier this spring, the Chos took over a retail food court space within the market. In addition to beverages, La Maison Bleue offers small pastries like mochi doughnuts and a trio of cheesecakes by the slice ($6.50). We had a chance to try the black sesame cheesecake and came away impressed. The cheesecake itself is rich, and the black sesame adds a nutty depth that kept us coming back for more.
While the fresh beverage market is where La Maison Bleue has made its mark, its organic nature does present a challenge in terms of shelf life. All La Maison Bleue drinks are sold refrigerated, which also presents hurdles.
You can get seasonal drinks like a black sesame milk tea or yuzu strawberry tea at La Masion Bleue's storefront inside Mitsuwa Marketplace.
Chris Wolfgang
To solve that problem, La Maison Bleue has been in discussions with independent beverage bottlers that could package their drinks in ways that extend the shelf life. When we spoke to the Chos, the discussions were still in the early steps, where a lot of experimentation takes place to turn a hand-crafted beverage into something that's worth bottling.
"It's not a one-to-one formulation to scale up a drink," Jay explains. "We're trying out a lot of different recipes at the moment."
But the Chos are hopeful that the hard work will pay off, and they believe they could have their product on the shelves of bigger stores and retailers towards the end of the year.
In the interim, it's getting easier to get our hands on La Maison Bleue's line of drinks, whether its via their daily presence at Mitsuwa, at any number of their growing list of partners or via delivery platforms like UberEats. And when the day comes that you find a La Maison Bleue drink on the shelf of your local grocery store, you can be assured that the Chos have brought the same level of quality to their hand-crafted organic drinks.
La Maison Bleue Cafe, inside Mitsuwa Marketplace, 100 Legacy Drive, Plano. Daily, 11 am – 8 p.m.
