When French-trained pasty chef Melanie Dunn opened her namesake bakery in North Park three years ago, it marked a milestone in her long, sometimes trying journey from former school teacher to the owner of a bona fide Parisian-style patisserie.
Despite the much delayed opening of Pâtisserie Mélanie and a subsequent lawsuit accusing San Diego Gas & Electric of “negligent” work on the 30th Street space, Dunn was confident that her flaky croissants, buttery kouign-amann, and quiche lorraine would draw a steady stream of French pastry aficionados.
But sales were not quite what she and her husband, Axel Schwarz, expected, and they are now closing their corner shop with the pink pastel and tiled facade for good. The last day of service will be Sunday.
Not surprisingly, the 1,500-square-foot space has had a steady stream of traffic since the announcement was made, as customers flock to take home their favorite French pastries and sip a café noisette.
“It’s kind of one of life’s great ironies,” said Dunn, taking a break in the bakery after a busy morning of sales. “It’s like, when you open, everybody’s interested because you’re new, and then when the announcement comes that you’re closing, everybody’s like, ‘Oh no, what a loss.’ And we’re like, ‘Where were you?’”
The decision to finally close — both heartbreaking and unavoidable — came a little over a week ago after the couple realized they could no longer continue to subsidize the business with their own funds.
“We just kept trying to build the runway so that the plane could go and take off, and we just ran out of money to build the runway,” said Dunn, who estimates that she and her husband invested about $1 million in transforming the North Park space into a contemporary bakery/cafe with a bright, airy feel.
Dunn and her husband strategized ways to boost sales over the past few years, at one point launching dinner service with an ambitious menu of French classics like coq au vin, beef Bourguignon and cassoulet. But that ended six months after it started. They also tried their hand at wholesaling pastries to local coffee houses, and in 2024, the shop launched a fundraising program to help finance outdoor umbrellas, acoustic panels, and expand its brunch and lunch menu.
“Sales could have been stronger, you know, with this location, this corner,” Dunn said. “I mean, every group of baristas and bakers who I worked with, they were always really surprised. They would say that it feels like we should be busier.”
Exacerbating matters was a pandemic that intervened and a much longer buildout of the bakery space than what Dunn and Schwarz anticipated.
“I think my husband would say, from a business perspective, that the length of time that it took and some of the complications of the build-out put us in a place where we really just didn’t have enough runway,” Dunn said. “We’d try different things to boost sales and revenue but I never felt like we really took off. It’s always felt like a struggle.”
In early 2024, the couple filed suit against SDG&E, claiming it had turned what they describe as a simple utility connection and upgrade into protracted delays that took more than three years to resolve. Schwarz said this week that the “matter has been resolved,” but declined to elaborate further on how the legal claim was resolved.
Dunn’s path to becoming a pastry chef and small-business entrepreneur began after she decided to undertake a rigorous pastry training program at Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris, which she completed more than a decade ago while still teaching. She later turned her dream into a reality when she and her husband converted a portion of their live-work space in Hillcrest into a very small retail boutique that operated for about a year before they moved forward with the North Park project.
The imminent closure of their latest venture comes at a time when bakeries are enjoying something of a renaissance in San Diego. In the past several years, such highly regarded venues as Knead, Izola and Relic (all in downtown San Diego), and Secret Sister in South Park have opened and remain popular.
As much as Dunn tried to focus on replicating the traditional pastry techniques and confections she became accustomed to in Paris, she believes consumers here are generally attracted to the next cool culinary trend, and she was unwilling to continually reinvent her brand.
“It reminds me, honestly, of, you know, when doughnuts and cupcakes were all the rage, and everyone was like, let’s put bacon on this, and then that sort of fad died out,” she said. “And I feel like maybe that is what’s happening right now in baking, where you’ve got people trying to do Korean croissant flavorings, and then others have, like, jalapenos and things like that. And that’s outside of what you would probably find in Paris, so I didn’t chase after that.”
Dunn and Schwarz have engaged restaurant broker Nate Benedetto to sell their lease and their business assets once they close.
Benedetto believes that the patisserie location will be in high demand for some kind of culinary venture.
“They spent a lot of money making that asset look beautiful, and we think there will be a buyer who will want to step into that location,” he said. “I think it’s one of the top corners in North Park, and it could be a very exciting place to do business for restaurants and bars. I think North Park has had a great couple of years, and it’s about to get better with two more restaurants about to open within a block of here.”
As for Dunn’s future, she says it’s too soon to start thinking about returning to the world of pastry.
“I am going to take some time to just let the flour dust settle,” she said. “The easiest thing for me to do would be to go back into teaching, because that’s what I was doing for 15 years before I started doing this. So I think it’s going to be a while before I’m able to think about being part of the food industry again.”