Coquette Patisserie a boutique bakery sourcing local ingredients
Emily McCune’s Fergus Falls bakery combines her love of French pastries with her passion for using locally grown ingredients.
Coquette Patisserie, located at 211 W Lincoln in Fergus Falls, is a boutique bakery. McCune sources locally grown and produced ingredients for her culinary delights.
The Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts grad uses butter from Millerville Co-op Creamery, eggs from Acres of Asher near Fergus Falls and sources flour from Swany White Flour Mills by Freeport.
There are some ingredients that are more difficult to source local, like sugar, but McCune will be using pure, organic cane sugar exclusively.
All in all, McCune says her final menu - both bakery items and sandwiches - will be 70 percent locally sourced. Expose our communes of local flour, butter and eggs — the pillars of pastry — with a rotating seasonal menu.”
While the menu items are extensive, eclairs, macarons, tarts and croissants will be the focus, she said.
Sandwiches will feature locally sourced meats (some coming from Acres of Asher), cheeses from Fruitful Seasons Dairy by Alexandria, a dairy that produces raw milk cheese from pasture-raised cows and produce sourced from Sower’s Harvest Farm of Fergus Falls.
This isn’t her first rodeo in the food business.
McCune worked in the retail health food industry while in her 20s and moved to Fergus Falls in her 30s to nanny her nephew. Her interest in food preparation and production led McCune to enroll in the sustainable agriculture and food production program at Minnesota State Community and Technical College’s Fergus Falls campus. She graduated from the program in 2013 and was involved food production and food preparation at local restaurants. McCune also connected growers to the Fergus Falls Farmers Market.
She had her own “urban farm” where she grew a large garden, selling produce to individuals, families and local residents, plus raising a few hens for eggs.
Her life has had hills and valleys as she dealt with addiction.
“Everything came crumbling down for a few years,” she said. And she had to move and leave her urban production behind.
Her life trajectory is a “B.C. and A.D.” - before recovery and after recovery.
She became sober in 2019 and traveled to France and Spain in 2023 and 2024. Those trips, she said, reignited her passion for food and served as a catalyst for enrolling in culinary school and planning for Coquette.
Once she returned to Fergus Falls, McCune baked doughnuts for a year at a convenience store. She next started Sugar High Cannabis Consulting and Dispensary in Fergus Falls where she sold THC and CBD products as well as hemp-derived edibles.
Always the baker, McCune also had a cottage industry baking business where she sold such delicacies as cookies and desserts.
She operated the business, managing employees and maintaining records, for about five years, but, when Minnesota approved marijuana sales, the city established a license for cannabis businesses. There were others who sought the licensing along with McCune’s Sugar High, but only two were approved. McCune was among those who were not.
McCune saw an opportunity to move in the right direction, she said. She enrolled in the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts in August 2024. She graduated in June from the culinary school with an AOS in Baking and Pastry Arts.
“It’s a lot of work and a lot of early mornings, but I am excited to serve my community and for some face time with customers again,” she said.
Visit Coquette Patisserie at 211 West Lincoln in Fergus Falls from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. Check her Facebook page for store opening details.
